Vanishing Features Of The 2.6 Kernel

chromatic writes "Jerry Cooperstein has written an excellent article summarizing the features removed from the upcoming 2.6 kernel. One controversial change may be tightening restrictions on binary-only modules." And Lovechild writes with some more 2.6 news: "I recently did an inteview with famous kernel hacker extraordinare and all round nice guy Robert M. Love for Tinyminds.org, about kernel 2.6 and what can be expected for desktop Linux users, when the new kernel series is released.

Comments

Re:Binary modules

[crow]

You left off one major con:

Binary-only modules must be updated by the vendor when the kernel interface changes.

If we must have binary-only modules, I like how Cisco did it for their VPN software: you compile a small wrapper function with a provided library file to generate the module. That way you can generate one specific to your kernel version.

Are they nuts?

[I Am The Owl]

This may very well break some rather expensive commercial Linux products, but that doesn't seem to bother most kernel developers. Reminding the purveyors of binary modules that they continue to operate at the pleasure of the Linux kernel developers and their open-source licenses is seen to be a necessary (even enjoyable) task.

See also: quickest way to discourage commercial development on your platform.

Gee, do you think all these corporations who have been embracing Linux in these past few years will still be using it when they can no longer use their expensive software investments with it? I doubt there are reasonable open source alternatives for most of these applications, like video card drivers or movie production applications, for example. Good luck on getting more people to adopt your platform after that.

I forsee a massive move to FreeBSD if this bullshit continues.

Re:Beggers can't be choosers

[pclminion]

You can use the old kernel, you can use the new kernel, you can use your own kernel. Everyone can make whatever they want.

Untrue. Most people are incapable of hacking kernel code, or any kind of code.

The kernel developers can use their abilities and positions to essentially blackmail the user base. New hardware drivers aren't usually backported to older kernels, so in order to get modern support for most things you have to run the latest. Want to run on modern hardware? You have to upgrade to a new kernel, with a new license, new restrictions, etc.

They don't owe you anything.

This is hilarious. You know, I once posted a rant on LKML about some particular issue (details unimportant). I essentially said that if it wasn't addressed, I might consider moving to BeOS (which was looking very good to me at the time). I have the freedom to make that choice, right? They don't OWE me anything, right? So clearly I most not owe THEM anything.

But I got several responses accusing me of BLACKMAIL, saying that I was "threatening" to move to BeOS in order to force someone to do something.

I could understand if there was some disagreement on a technical point, but by that point the conversation had degenerated into a flamethrowing competition between Andre Hendrick and the rest of the list. I was the only guy backing up Hendrick.

Anyway, I know from experience that many kernel developers are elitist, arrogant people. I guess they think that because their code runs in Ring 0 they must be somehow superior to the rest of us.