> Denis Leroy wrote: > > On a more general note, is there any sort of communications between Red > > Hat people (who have phones on their desk) and the very few companies > > that do groundbreaking linux support (Nvidia, VMWare, ...) as far as > > release schedules and support for new kernel features ? Just asking... > > To which Arjan van de Ven responded: > what you call groundbreaking linux support... I personally consider a > major problem... they are > 1) Binary only, and not helping the open source goal at large forward > 2) Borderline legal, if at all (my personal opinion is that they are not > legal, and abusing code I wrote) > 3) Lagging behind and even keeping the kernel from going forward at times. > but.. if you buy a RHEL subscription the support guys you call will be > happy to work with such vendors on joint problems. I know this is a touchy subject :-) and the binary drivers thread almost turned into a flame war. Arjan, in your response below you seem to be talking about the linux kernel while i was talking about the Fedora Core distro, and those are two different things. Seems to me, on one side we have the linux kernel developers whose interests lie on improving the kernel and adding cool features to it, and hereby rely on the strength of the open-source concept in which API or ABI changes can be propagated very quickly. This allows the kernel to move very fast (unlike other Unices that have been around longer) and to maintain a very high level of quality in its drivers. They see closed source drivers as an annoyance and hindrance, and companies that support them as being capitalistic greedy evil entities whose sole purpose is the demise of the Open-Source movement. :-) On the other hand, we have companies that try to get some leverage out of the Linux movement, sometimes in a clumsy fashion, or try to respond to their customers demands for Linux support. They are usually afraid of the GPL since it's human nature to be afraid of things one doesn't fully understand. They usually mean well, but are uneducated and completely unprepared for a world in which code is free, having no processes in place for it since it hasn't been done before. They see kernel developers as pony-tailed hippies who hate their guts and are hard to interact with, much less rely on. :-) So my question was: shouldn't Fedora stand in the middle ? Shouldn't it be the job of putting together a desktop-oriented distribution precisely to coordinate the efforts of the various "forces" out there (a hard and thankless job IMO), and reach compromises in order to provide the best possible desktop experience. This has nothing to do with kernel development, but rather in picking the right features to use in that kernel without breaking the most popular components, coordinating schedules and releases with said components, to make sure a Fedora Core release doesn't break the Nvidia drivers (one of those most popular components, whether you like it or not) or doesn't happen one week before Firefox 1.0 is released. Isn't there somebody in the Fedora community (whether he/she's a RedHat employee or not) that should be working on this ? His/her job would include calling Nvidia and saying something like this "Hi, i work on the Fedora distro. Even though our kernel developers hate you, half of our users use your drivers and we'd rather not break it for our next release. Is there anything we can do?". To which there is or isn't of course, but at least somebody's gotta try... Anyways, sorry for the long rant :-) -denis http://cdrdao.sf.net/
