Re: Standard Development Integration

From: Marco Colombo (marco@esi.it)
Date: Mon Jan 17 2000 - 08:52:25 EST


On Fri, 14 Jan 2000, Horst von Brand wrote:

> Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2000 16:32:45 -0300
> From: Horst von Brand <vonbrand@pincoya.inf.utfsm.cl>
> To: Marco Colombo <marco@esi.it>
> Cc: linux-kernel@vger.rutgers.edu
> Subject: Re: Standard Development Integration
>
> Marco Colombo <marco@esi.it> said:
>
> [...]
>
> > It doesn't matter what will be in. The fact is people need/want/demand/dream
> > of new features. They want them in 2.3/4 not just ASAP (subtle difference,
> > which is the point).
>
> Then get together, pool some cash and hire somebody to do the work. Nobosy
> has any right whatsoever to _demand_ anyting for nothing.

It already happened. Unluckily they chose the 2.2 tree instead of the 2.3.
I think that's because 2.3 was not there when they decided to implement the
missing features. It doesn't really matter if it was a volunteers based
project, or a paid one. Company 'A' wanted to offer feature 'X' to their
customers (since they're willing to pay, they demand, right?). Since
2.3 was not there, they developed on 2.2. As a result, 'X' is there on 2.2
and not on 2.3. Developer 'B' wanted to spend his/hers spare time on
coding feature 'Y' (even if nobody was 'demanding' it), and did it on 2.2
because 2.3 was not there. Where's the difference?
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that the perfect development cycle
of the linux kernel should be biased just to support the commercial needs of
companies who want to make money out for Linux. I'm saying that the
cycle is not perfect, and sometimes it does not allow people to do kernel
developing in the right direction. It forces them to work on a private
tree based on a *stable* kernel, because there's no official devel tree.

Right now we have RAID which is not compatible with ReiserFS, which partly
does the same things of Ext3, in a somewhat different way, and both in
a way which is not compatible with Linus' ideas on hoe the JFS layer will
be on 2.5 (sorry for being rough, and imprecise: i'm not trying to make it
technically correct; i'm trying to make it sound bad B-)). I think that
something went wrong here. And i don't think the individual developers
made wrong choises. I think they were somewhat force to work on the
wrong kernel, at the wrong time.

Ok, i propose to end this thread. I don't think I can make it clearer,
probably due to my English not lettin me do a better job in explaining
my thoughts. Let's go on on privare mail, if you like, since I don't
see others post on the same matter (even if i know they're reading us).
BTW, I'm having some problems receiving messages from the list, since some
of them (like yours, which show up on my mailbox much before I see them
coming from vger) are delayed a lot. I hope no big discussion is going on
on this thread and I'm missing all the messages. B-)

> --
> Dr. Horst H. von Brand mailto:vonbrand@inf.utfsm.cl
> Departamento de Informatica Fono: +56 32 654431
> Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria +56 32 654239
> Casilla 110-V, Valparaiso, Chile Fax: +56 32 797513
>

.TM.

-- 
      ____/  ____/   /
     /      /       /			Marco Colombo
    ___/  ___  /   /		      Technical Manager
   /          /   /			 ESI s.r.l.
 _____/ _____/  _/		       Colombo@ESI.it

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