On Thu, 21 Aug 2008, Charles Manning wrote: > On Wednesday 20 August 2008 17:15:01 vb wrote: > > On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 9:29 PM, Paul Gortmaker > > > > <paul.gortmaker@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 11:57 PM, vb <vb@xxxxxxxx> wrote: > > >> so, say a developer submits a proprietary driver and it gets accepted. > > > > > > Doesn't happen. By design. If the driver is proprietary then it is > > > presumably not meant for open distribution, and hence not compatible with > > > GPL and widespread distribution into 100,000 public git repositories. So > > > it won't get submitted and it won't get accepted. > > > > I guess 'proprietary' is not the right term then, how do you call a > > driver which is not a secret and not a problem to release, but > > controls some hardware present in only in certain devices of a certain > > company. > > > > Would such a driver be accepted? Wouldn't such a driver get stale > > after a few kernel releases? > > In-tree is no silver bullet. > > When people modify internal APIs they will likely fix anything that breaks > compilation. However many things are more subtle than that and it is very > easy to end up with a driver or other code that compiles but does not work > properly. My experience with Linux/m68k tells me that +95% of the breakage is visible by compiler warnings and errors. If it still compiles, it still works ;-) > Luckily APIs for drivers (the most common stuff that people work on) don't > change that much, and the interfaces are reasonably clear. If you want some > hell then try working on file systems :-). Really? So how come so few changes are needed to keep squashfs working? With kind regards, Geert Uytterhoeven Software Architect Sony Techsoft Centre Europe The Corporate Village · Da Vincilaan 7-D1 · B-1935 Zaventem · Belgium Phone: +32 (0)2 700 8453 Fax: +32 (0)2 700 8622 E-mail: Geert.Uytterhoeven@xxxxxxxxxxx Internet: http://www.sony-europe.com/ A division of Sony Europe (Belgium) N.V. VAT BE 0413.825.160 · RPR Brussels Fortis · BIC GEBABEBB · IBAN BE41293037680010
