Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1753299AbZKBBSq (ORCPT ); Sun, 1 Nov 2009 20:18:46 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1752917AbZKBBSp (ORCPT ); Sun, 1 Nov 2009 20:18:45 -0500 Received: from icculus.org ([67.106.77.212]:45648 "EHLO icculus.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752874AbZKBBSp (ORCPT ); Sun, 1 Nov 2009 20:18:45 -0500 Date: Sun, 1 Nov 2009 20:17:50 -0500 (EST) From: "Ryan C. Gordon" X-X-Sender: icculus@caridad.local To: Rayson Ho cc: =?ISO-8859-15?Q?M=E5ns_Rullg=E5rd?= , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: FatELF patches... In-Reply-To: <73a01bf20911011408v5b6d335fj46c893a8e7d26ab4@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: References: <1257103201.2865.6.camel@chumley> <73a01bf20911011408v5b6d335fj46c893a8e7d26ab4@mail.gmail.com> User-Agent: Alpine 1.10 (OSX 962 2008-03-14) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2207 Lines: 50 > Adding code that might bring lawsuits to Linux developers, > distributors, users is a BIG disadvantage. I'm tracking down a lawyer to discuss the issue. I'm surprised there aren't a few hanging around here, honestly. I sent a request in to the SFLC, and if that doesn't pan out, I'll dig for coins in my car seat to pay a lawyer for a few hours of her time. If it's a big deal, we'll figure out what to do from there. But let's not talk about the sky falling until we get to that point, please. > "Given enough disc space, there's no reason you couldn't have one DVD > .iso that installs an x86-64, x86, PowerPC, SPARC, and MIPS system" I've had about a million people point out the boot loader thing. There's an x86/amd64 forest if you can see past the MIPS trees. Still, I said there were different points that were more compelling for different individuals. I don't think this is the most compelling argument on that page, and I think there's a value in talking about theoretical benefits in addition to practical ones. Theoretical ones become practical the moment someone decides to roll out a company-internal distribution that works on all the workstations inside IBM or Google or whatever...even if Fedora would turn their nose up at the idea for a general-purpose release. > IMO, the biggest problem users get is not with which hardware binary > to download, but the incompatibly of different Linux kernels and glibc > (the API/ABI). These are concerns, too, but the kernel has been, in my experience, very good at binary compatibility with user space back as far as I can remember. glibc has had some painful progress, but since NPTL stabilized a long time ago, even this hasn't been bad at all. Certainly one has to be careful--I would even use the word diligent--to maintain binary compatibility, but this was much more of a hurting for application developers a decade ago. At least, that's been my experience. --ryan. -- 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/