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The 2.5 Kernel Tree And Alan Cox

Posted by Hemos on from the moving-forward-off dept.

Motor writes "It seems that (as everyone suspected), the 2.5 Linux kernel tree is close to opening. However, contrary to expectations, 2.4 will not be maintained by Alan Cox, but will instead be handled by Marcelo Tosatti. Thanks to Alan for all his hard work on 2.0 and 2.2."

6 of 247 comments (clear)

  1. Alan Cox and the DMCA by PM4RK5 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Is this partially do to his over-zealousness and/or fears concerning the DMCA?

    It is a sad day, if US laws are scaring off foreign OSS coders.

  2. Alan Cox is doing the right thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    AC's has shown great skill in pulling together rapid/major changes. Clearly his help is needed with the 2.5 series more than 2.4. But there is also the part that people don't like to talk openly about which is: how much can other commerical GNU/Linux distributors claim that the offical kernel development is a puppet of Red hat?

    While AC has done a great job of judging the priorities of the Linux community as a whole over the priorities of Red hat, there is still the question of how much his employeement at RH effects him. Anotherwords, for example, Ext3/JBD is a kernel modification that Red hat is very much pushing. It now appears in all Red hat v7.2 kernels. Also, the Ext3/JBD modifications have appeared for a while in the AC patches. But if these modification started appearing in the 2.4 kernel, others might question if it is because it is truely ready to be in 2.4 or if Red hat is using their AC position to strong arm submittions. Clearly IBM and SGI would also like to see their file system additions in the vanilla 2.4 kernel series. Having to justify the addition of one over the other shouldn't have to be AC's job.

    So, I believe Alan Cox is doing the best technical and *political* choice for the Linux community as a whole. :)

  3. We were suprised as well by gallir · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Curious we discussed this issue in our LUG web page (in Spanish) three days ago. We were surprised Alan seems not to want the job, and Marcelo Tosatti didn't answer publically.

    OTH, Linus continues assuming is Alan the responsible (Spanish too).

    --
    sgis ddo ekil t'nod i
  4. Re:Alan Cox hijacked development by GFD · · Score: 5, Interesting
    While this is a troll a lot of the posters here are missing the point entirely.

    Avoiding jail is not being polical!

    You may have the opinion that anything Alan does as a kernel developer/maintainer is not affected by the DMCA and will not result in charges from some over zelous DA, but I seriously doubt there are any lawyers out there that would back you up. There have to be quite a few court rulings before anyone will even have a feel for this.

    One of the reasons that everyone calls DMCA bad law is it's total lack of boundaries. This makes it unpredictable law, subject to abuse. While you and I may feel that there would be no justification to jail someone because they worked on CD/DVD drivers that someone else could use to run DECSS(?) is no guarantee for Alan or anyone else that someone won't arrest them and see what the courts say.

    Avoiding being someone's legal guinea pig is not being political.

  5. Time Off?? by HamNRye · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A tip for the Newbies, this is not the first time... Alan has left the project before, generally around the same time in the development cycle. I think Alan is really into the "Cutting edge" features, and once kernel development slows to the quibbling about minutae, as it has now, I really think it takes alot out of him.

    Alan also seems to work on HIS kernel, and then let everybody use it. He never intended to be such a dominant voice, no matter how strong his opinions. I think when good technical discussions between he and Linus get publicized as being interminable rifts (which believe me they are not) he tends to step back, being the less media visible member and wanting to avoid the appearance of a disastrous controversy.

    And quite frankly, how many of us work 6 months on our hobby and then take some time off?? I sure do...

    Wait until the Kernel gets exciting again, AC'll be back.

    ~Hammy
    nothing4sale.org
    WindowsXP was crashing like a monkey driving a Pinto.

  6. Re:Alan Cox hijacked development by dlippolt · · Score: 4, Interesting

    i totally agree.

    my personal feeling is that all the work alan has put in on the kernel project _specifically entitles_ him to highlight some issue _directly relevant_ to continued linux development.

    my policy-perspective, assuming a mythical world where linux is a company and i own it, is that political viewpoints should be expressly disallowed in the any part of the source tree, to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. in this case, his efforts are on-topic and don't qualify so much as an expression company-politics (like backstabbing and jibber jabber) or social-politics (like gun control or christianity) but deal specifically with intellectual-property-politics.

    end of story.

    as he is one of the helmsman of the linux community i applaud his efforts. that i can run entire companies and isp's, securely, with near 100% uptime without using a single windows server due to his (and the many others) efforts encourages me to listen when he speaks... not jump up and down about gun control.

    besides, come on people!!! if you can't get an uncensored copy of the changelog with nothing more than a web/ftp client then you're in the wrong business!