Re: Good bye

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

 



Chris Jones wrote:

When the same program works on one version of an operating system but not on another, there's nothing to ask. The operating system has clearly failed to provide a usable interface.

We don't want stable interfaces (not quite yet, maybe in time).

Freedom doesn't consist of telling other people what they want. It is about everyone having choices.

Windows may have more stability in this regard, but the down side is you end up stuck with bad interfaces that you cannot change due to 'compatibility' issues. Users of these interfaces then start writing there own kludgy workarounds. A mess.

Examples? I have reasons to dislike windows, but they mostly go back to pre-win2ksp2 days. I can't think of any particular driver-related issues that are a problem now. Likewise the binary OS X drivers work just fine for me.

Linux IMHO, has a different view. If an interface is broken don't try and live with it but fix it. If this breaks things downstream so be it, in the OSS world fixing things is not so hard. The problems are with closed sourced entities where those changing the interface cannot fix the closed source.

Lets be specifc - Most of the issues you refer to (nivida, vmware) relate to the kernel.

OK, let's be specific. Start with firewire. I can't afford to deal with firewire as it has been handled in fedora for the 1st 6 versions and haven't tried with the last 2 yet. Show me how having people who have no reason to care if a device driver works or not writing the code has worked out better than making it simple for vendors to provide drivers.

Here developers may change some interface, but such changes are internal to the kernel, like drivers. In this case those changing the interface fix the driver so the end shot is all is still OK. They cannot do this for closed source stuff, which is why such things are disliked and distros like Fedora do not support them. A quote from Linus I recently read

"Asked by Zemlin why the Linux kernel does not have a stable device
driver application binary interface, Torvalds said, "We really,
really, really don't want one.

Once again, I'm not particularly interested in someone telling me what I want.

The main reason most people want a
stable ABI [application binary interface] is so that they can have
their binary drivers and not have to give out source. They don't want
to merge that source into the stable kernel or the standard kernel.""

And that part is simply self-serving refusal to cooperate with anyone else through standard interfaces.

I for one agree and do not want the kernel developers to stop changing (improving) things just to provide a more stable interface to external closed source stuff drivers etc.

I might have agreed back when I thought Linus was inexperienced at OS design and incapable of specifying an interface suitable for use over some length of time. I don't think that is the case anymore. And I might has agreed that source was important back when many companies were competing with incompatible processor designs and there was some change a device might need to be moved to a new/different system. Now I just want an interface that works for the life of the box.

> If those closed source providers want
to support linux, they either keep up with the kernel developers (which they could if they wanted, kernel release candidates are always available before release) or they allow their drivers to be OSS'ed and placed in the kernel, where they will be maintained 'for free'.

I can't afford to use something 'free' that doesn't work as well as something written by the vendor that knows the most about the device in question and has the most reason to care about it operating correctly. There's nothing wrong with source availability and, other things being equal, it is a good thing if everyone chooses not to place any restrictions on what others can do with it. However it is no more necessary for me to have source to a device driver for my purposes than to have all the parts to assemble a jet before I would ride in one.

One day kernel development might slow down, but I don't want that to happen prematurely and for us to end up with bad interfaces.

How old must Linus be before you'll trust him with this decision?

--
  Les Mikesell
   lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx

--
fedora-list mailing list
fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx
To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
[Index of Archives]     [Older Fedora Users]     [Fedora Announce]     [Fedora Package Announce]     [EPEL Announce]     [Fedora Magazine]     [Fedora News]     [Fedora Summer Coding]     [Fedora Laptop]     [Fedora Cloud]     [Fedora Advisory Board]     [Fedora Education]     [Fedora Security]     [Fedora Scitech]     [Fedora Robotics]     [Fedora Maintainers]     [Fedora Infrastructure]     [Fedora Websites]     [Anaconda Devel]     [Fedora Devel Java]     [Fedora Legacy]     [Fedora Desktop]     [Fedora Fonts]     [ATA RAID]     [Fedora Marketing]     [Fedora Management Tools]     [Fedora Mentors]     [SSH]     [Fedora Package Review]     [Fedora R Devel]     [Fedora PHP Devel]     [Kickstart]     [Fedora Music]     [Fedora Packaging]     [Centos]     [Fedora SELinux]     [Fedora Legal]     [Fedora Kernel]     [Fedora OCaml]     [Coolkey]     [Virtualization Tools]     [ET Management Tools]     [Yum Users]     [Tux]     [Yosemite News]     [Gnome Users]     [KDE Users]     [Fedora Art]     [Fedora Docs]     [Asterisk PBX]     [Fedora Sparc]     [Fedora Universal Network Connector]     [Libvirt Users]     [Fedora ARM]

  Powered by Linux