Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Thu, 17 Jan 2002 09:46:21 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Thu, 17 Jan 2002 09:46:11 -0500 Received: from dsl254-112-233.nyc1.dsl.speakeasy.net ([216.254.112.233]:29320 "EHLO snark.thyrsus.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Thu, 17 Jan 2002 09:46:01 -0500 Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2002 09:29:17 -0500 From: "Eric S. Raymond" To: David Woodhouse Cc: Horst von Brand , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, kbuild-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: CML2-2.1.3 is available Message-ID: <20020117092917.A7905@thyrsus.com> Reply-To: esr@thyrsus.com Mail-Followup-To: "Eric S. Raymond" , David Woodhouse , Horst von Brand , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, kbuild-devel@lists.sourceforge.net In-Reply-To: <20020116204345.A22055@thyrsus.com> <20020116164758.F12306@thyrsus.com> <200201162156.g0GLukCj017833@tigger.cs.uni-dortmund.de> <20020116164758.F12306@thyrsus.com> <26592.1011230762@redhat.com> <20020116204345.A22055@thyrsus.com> <3515.1011257639@redhat.com> <20020117083757.A7299@thyrsus.com> <13681.1011276592@redhat.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5.1i In-Reply-To: <13681.1011276592@redhat.com>; from dwmw2@infradead.org on Thu, Jan 17, 2002 at 02:09:52PM +0000 Organization: Eric Conspiracy Secret Labs X-Eric-Conspiracy: There is no conspiracy Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org David Woodhouse : > Utter crap. CML2 makes them possible, and is a step in the right direction. > I'm not suggesting that you never make these changes - just that you do them > separately from the change in mechanism. Sorry, it's *way* too late for that. In fact, it was already way too late for that at the kernel summit last March when Linus issued his ukase. The "change in mechanism" phase of the project was essentially complete almost a year ago now. If you had been paying attention, you would have noticed this. The idea that a pure change in mechanism could ever have been cleanly separated from changes in behavior was a fantasy anyway. Large changes in a software architecture just don't work that way, as we rediscover every time a significant subsystem gets reworked to fix bugs. I have held off on many things that I think badly need to be done in order to pacify the conservative instincts of people like yourself -- for example, I think the device menus cry out to be reorganized on a functional basis rather than on the basis of internal distinctions like "block" vs. "character" devices that are pointless to anyone but a kernel implementor. But if attempting that implausibility of no behavioral changes is what you think I "agreed" to, we'd best both forget the "agreement" -- because it would be hypocrisy if I agreed falsely and an absurd, project-strangling shackle if I agreed sincerely. Continuity, avoiding gratuitous changes, and a good-faith effort to emulate the interfaces people are expecting is one thing; artificial stasis is entirely another. I'm doing my best to give you the former. You won't get the latter, no way, nohow. If you have spotted errors, the time to tell me about them is *now*. It's unfair to me and to other developers to artificially hold off until we pass some mythical point at which it will suddenly be OK for behavior to change. The real world doesn't work that way, and I am sure you are too experienced to believe it does. -- Eric S. Raymond If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would ... [be] the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible. -- Henry David Thoreau - 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/