Date: Mon, 5 Dec 2005 20:08:20 -0800
From: Greg KH <greg@kroah.com>
To: Tim Bird <tim.bird@am.sony.com>
Cc: Dave Airlie <airlied@gmail.com>, David Woodhouse <dwmw2@infradead.org>,
       arjan@infradead.org, andrew@walrond.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Linux in a binary world... a doomsday scenario
Message-ID: <20051206040820.GB26602@kroah.com>
References: <21d7e9970512051610n1244467am12adc8373c1a4473@mail.gmail.com> <4394DA1D.3090007@am.sony.com>
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On Mon, Dec 05, 2005 at 04:23:57PM -0800, Tim Bird wrote:
> Dave Airlie wrote:
> >>To the larger argument about supporting binary drivers,
> >>all Arjan manages to prove with his post is that,
> >>if handled in the worst possible way, support for
> >>binary drivers would be a disaster.  Who can disagree
> >>with that?
> >> 
> > And do you think that given the opportunity, any company is going
> > spend the extra money required to not do it in the worst possible
> > way?? 
> 
> I meant "handled in the worst possible way by
> the kernel developers".  It *is* possible to define
> stable APIs and have them used successfully.
> 
> POSIX is not the greatest example, but it seems
> to work OK.  I realize that drivers are more
> tightly bound to the kernel than are libraries
> or applications, but sheesh, this is not rocket
> science.

For people to think that the kernel developers are just "too dumb" to
make a stable kernel api (and yes, I've had people accuse me of this
many times to my face[1]) shows a total lack of understanding as to
_why_ we change the in-kernel api all the time.  Please see
Documentation/stable_api_nonsense.txt for details on this.

thanks,

greg k-h

[1] My usual response is, "If we are so dumb, why are you using the kernel
    made by us?", which usually stops the conversation right there.

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