Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1422781AbWJDSqm (ORCPT ); Wed, 4 Oct 2006 14:46:42 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1422782AbWJDSqm (ORCPT ); Wed, 4 Oct 2006 14:46:42 -0400 Received: from smtp.osdl.org ([65.172.181.4]:14794 "EHLO smtp.osdl.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1422781AbWJDSql (ORCPT ); Wed, 4 Oct 2006 14:46:41 -0400 Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2006 11:38:19 -0700 (PDT) From: Linus Torvalds To: Jean Tourrilhes cc: "John W. Linville" , Jeff Garzik , Lee Revell , Alessandro Suardi , Norbert Preining , hostap@shmoo.com, Andrew Morton , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, johannes@sipsolutions.net Subject: Re: wpa supplicant/ipw3945, ESSID last char missing In-Reply-To: <20061004181032.GA4272@bougret.hpl.hp.com> Message-ID: References: <1159807483.4067.150.camel@mindpipe> <20061003123835.GA23912@tuxdriver.com> <1159890876.20801.65.camel@mindpipe> <20061003180543.GD23912@tuxdriver.com> <4522A9BE.9000805@garzik.org> <20061003183849.GA17635@bougret.hpl.hp.com> <4522B311.7070905@garzik.org> <20061003214038.GE23912@tuxdriver.com> <20061004181032.GA4272@bougret.hpl.hp.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1711 Lines: 41 On Wed, 4 Oct 2006, Jean Tourrilhes wrote: > > You can't froze kernel userspace API forever. That is simply > not workable Stop arguing this way. It's not what we have ever done. We've _extended_ the API. But we don't break old ones. I don't even see why you argue. Even the people directly involved with this thing seem to say that it should have some simple translation layer and do the internal format thing. We've had major subsystem that do that, and I don't see why you think wireless is so different, and so special in this respect. The whole _point_ of a kernel is to act as a abstraction layer and resource management between user programs and hardware/outside world. That's why kernels _exist_. Breaking user-land API's is thus by definition something totally idiotic. If you need to break something, you create a new interface, and try to translate between the two, and maybe you deprecate the old one so that it can be removed once it's not in use any more. If you can't see that this is how a kernel should work, you're missing the point of having a kernel in the first place. Also, I don't want to hear about how this makes things harder and more complicated. The fact is, we're programmers, and we should care about the _users_. If we don't, we're just masturbating. There's a whole other side to this "create software" than just the "me, me, me" side, and if you lose sight of that side, that's a really bad thing. Linus - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/