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2.4 Kernel Maintainer Marcelo Tosatti Interviewed

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the stuff-to-read dept.

Jeremy Andrews writes "KernelTrap has an interview with Marcelo Tosatti. Marcelo became the maintainer of the 2.4 stable kernel when he was 18 years old, releasing his first kernel, 2.4.16, on November 26'th of 2001. Two years later, he recently released 2.4.23 and plans to soon put the 2.4 stable kernel tree into maintenance mode, only addressing bugs and security issues. Living in Brazil, Marcelo currently works for Cyclades Corporation. In this interview he looks at how he became the 2.4 maintainer, the challenges involved, and brings us up to date with the current status of the 2.4 kernel."

4 of 105 comments (clear)

  1. How is this line not getting mroe attention? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    JA: During the 2.4.23 release cycle, a bug was fixed in the do_brk() function. This bug was recently exploited in a high profile break-in of four Debian Project Linux servers. Why was 2.4.23 not released sooner when this bug was first fixed?

    Marcelo Tosatti: When I first applied the fix (sent from Andrew Morton), I didn't realize it was an exploitable bug (I understood it could crash the box).

    This guy just took responsibility for sitting on a known fix, which directly led to Debian compromise.

    It also led to a rapid patch cycle all over the place, as opposed to a more stable and controlled cycle, since everyone who saw Andrew Morton's patch could research the vuln and create the exploit.

    This delay gave blackhats a lot more time than whitehats.

    Perhaps this argues strongly for closed security bug reporting a la OIS' "responsible disclosure" model.

  2. The dreadlocks are new for me by agoliveira · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I worked with Marcelo at Conectiva (man, I missed that place but...) and that's *not* his real hair :)
    He probably just went to a hair stylist and made that... thing :-D
    I swear I never imagined Marcelo doing this kind of stuff but he's a kernel developer so you can expect anything!

    --
    Scientia est Potentia
    1. Re:The dreadlocks are new for me by vadim_t · · Score: 2, Interesting

      He's been like that for a while, I've seen him with that kind of hair at HispaLinux (big spanish Linux conference) which was in September. At the beginning I though he was one of the people who came to attend to his talk :-)

      Unfortunately, he's not the right person to talk in public, he seemed to be really nervous and didn't tell anything very new. Nobody can do everything though. I'm really happy with how the 2.4 kernel evolved.

  3. Child Labor by The+Tyro · · Score: 2, Interesting

    is probably a misplaced concern for a guy like this.

    He's working at an ISP, not a sweat shop or factory floor (what most child labor laws were designed to prevent, if I recall my history correctly).

    He's working with his head, not his back... bully for him (I can think of a few places that could use a teenage prodigy or two).

    --
    Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.