Cc: Greg KH <greg@...>, Simon Arlott <simon@...>, Chris Wright <chrisw@...>, <linux-kernel@...>, <linux-security-module@...>, Jan Engelhardt <jengelh@...>, Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...>, Andreas Gruenbacher <agruen@...>, Thomas Fricaccia <thomas_fricacci@...>, Jeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy@...>, James Morris <jmorris@...>, Crispin Cowan <crispin@...>, Giacomo Catenazzi <cate@...>, Alan Cox <alan@...>
On Sat, Oct 27, 2007 at 04:07:41PM +0200, Tilman Schmidt wrote:
There's one important point to note:
In a project of the size of the Linux kernel (at about 2000 distinct
people contributing code within one year) you will always lose
developers:
If you require too much from code for getting it included you lose some
of the people who develop code.
If you accept code of dubious quality you lose some of the people who
care about the quality of the kernel.
And if you add a stable API for modules with not GPL compatible licences
at least one untalented kernel developer (me) might give up his work.
If your goal is to please all developers you have a goal you can't
achieve.
The only reasonable way is to accept that whatever you do you'll lose
some people and go in the direction you consider the right one.
And the power of open source is that when an open source project gets
into a direction many people dislike they can simply fork it. Consider
e.g. XFree86->X.Org or NetBSD->OpenBSD. And that's nothing bad - either
the forks develop in different directions creating different useful
software or there's an evolutionary contest for the best software.
cu
Adrian
--
"Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
"Only a promise," Lao Er said.
Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed
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