Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2015 21:22:33 +0100
From: Al Viro <viro@ZenIV.linux.org.uk>
To: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Cc: "Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm@xmission.com>,
        Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
        Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>, gnomes@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk, teg@jklm.no,
        jkosina@suse.cz, luto@amacapital.net, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
        daniel@zonque.org, dh.herrmann@gmail.com, tixxdz@opendz.org
Subject: Re: [GIT PULL] kdbus for 4.1-rc1
Message-ID: <20150413202233.GR889@ZenIV.linux.org.uk>
References: <20150413190350.GA9485@kroah.com>
 <8738434yjk.fsf@x220.int.ebiederm.org>
 <20150413194217.GA10837@kroah.com>
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On Mon, Apr 13, 2015 at 09:42:17PM +0200, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> > I remain opposed to this half thought out trash of an ABI for the
> > meta-data.
> 
> You don't have to enable the metadata if you don't want to use it, it's
> an option :)

OK, _that_ argument needs to be stomped out.  It had been used before,
and it was a deliberate scam.  There is no such thing as optional kernel
interface, especially when udev/dbus/systemd crowd is nearby.  We'd been
through that excuse before; remember how devtmpfs was pushed in as "optional"?

This is a huge red flag.  On the level of "I need your account information
to transfer $200M you might have inherited from my deceased client".

Just to recap how it went the last time around: Kay kept pushing his piece of
code into the tree, claiming that it was optional, that nobody who doesn't
like it has to enable it, so what's the problem?  OK, in it went.  And pretty
soon udev (maintained by the same... meticulously honorable person) had
stopped working on the kernels that didn't have that enabled.

We had been there before.  To paraphrase another... meticulously honorable
person, "if you didn't want something relied upon, why have you put it into the
kernel?" Said person is on the record as having no problem whatsoever with
adding dependencies to the bottom of userland stack.

IMO either it's OK without "if you don't like it, don't enable it", or it
should not be merged at all.
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