Re: kernel modules

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Jason L Tibbitts III wrote:
"MS" == Max Spevack <mspevack@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:

MS> The prevailing sentiment is that the engineers most directly
MS> impacted by the decision are not in favor of kernel modules, and I
MS> think we need to trust the technical expertise of the people who
MS> will be doing the work.

While that's true, we have to accept the fact that users will if
necessary acquire their kernel modules from somewhere, thus presenting
the same problems to the Core kernel developers.  The end result is
that the user is further inconvenienced and nobody gains anything.
(Indeed, the situation could be worse if the source of the modules is
less well-maintained than Extras.)

 - J<

There is certainly a difference between users grabbing packages from third party repositories vs including them in Fedora Extras. If we include anything in the formal Fedora repositories , we need to accept the responsibility to support it properly. If Kernel modules are included in extras, the core kernel team needs to be able to debug any issues and work with them. Though Red Hat has a pretty big kernel team, the number of people who directly deal with kernel bug reports in Fedora is not high. Other than major issues, things are usually fixed by providing an update to the next kernel. Given the fast pace of kernel updates in Fedora Core and the lack of no stable in kernel API/ABI for kernel modules, any extras kernel modules will likely break often. If we are going to hold back changes until we get the kernel modules that we include in Fedora Extras working well with the latest upstream kernel that we intend to provide as a update in Fedora Core, that would very severely restrict or entirely stop us from providing any major kernel updates after a Fedora general release.

Dave Jones and others have clearly stated that they have no interest in additional work debugging any issues that might possibly arise from the user using any non-upstream kernel modules even if they are GPL'ed and included in Fedora Extras. Moreover anyone maintaining Fedora Extras So if we do decide to include the modules anyway, we would be left with a situation where Fedora on the whole isnt even willing to support what it provides. On the other hand, if those modules are good enough for the core kernel team to support them, it would make better sense to just include them in the core kernel package instead.

Rahul

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