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Cox on Torvalds and Linux Kernel Development
sebFlyte writes "Alan Cox' speech at FOSDEM sounds like it was interesting... according to this ZDNet report on it he has some interesting views. For one, he says: 'Linus is a good developer, but is a terrible engineer.' He also has a few digs at Torvald's methods surrounding security fixes, and some other interesting insights in the kernel development process: 'Sometimes you see a fix and think "this is perfect, move my fix into the kernel tree." Later you think, "I must have been drunk. Don't apply that patch."'"
I'm willing to be if such things continue, some entity, perhaps IBM, will set down their foot and use pressure put maintenance of the kernel project under the jackboot of a truly dictatorial manager, making Linux more an open source Cathedral than a bazaar.
- - - - - Fear not the reaper, but my shiny white teeth.
"Linus has this bad habit of fixing security holes quietly," said Cox. "This is a bad idea as some people read all the kernel patches to find the security holes."
I wouldn't advertise my mistakes eitherThe article paints Linus as the typical Flawed Hero of contemporary literature. He's good and yet he's not perfect - at least that's what comes out of it for me. (and no digs on BitKeeper .. hmmm..)
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
That Linus is a person, and not a GOD as some people worship him as.
;P
Its actually pretty damned nice to see a bunch of people get together and make something as big as the Linux Kernel. Linus started it, but we all will finish it.
Still, I fail to see how some bugs would be super-bad, as the article seems to say. Id rather have a crash bug, rather than a SUID change bug.. STill, not all security comes from the Kernel. Some security comes from network filter drivers, some com from the application, which many hackers target, and whatnot. Though, the kernel is a great place to attack if you have that guest acct and "want" root
the /. headline makes it looks like there's quite a bit of fued between cox and torvalds, which isnt really the case if you RTFM.
different people have different working styles, no matter whether it's kernel coding, software apps, or ASIC designs. if either group/individuals are too giving to the other group, there can never be enough feedback/ constructive critisisms between them. having yes-men surrounding you isnt the best thing. and it's not like that they're arguing so much they've halted any soft of development progress.
[offtopic]
gives me an idea though, maybe when job interviewers start asking me those behavioural questions about "a time when you've had disagreements and a way of resolving them", there's no need to bring up something too dramatic.
[/offtopic]
my blog
Linux has become much bigger than Linus now. The kernel alone has its parts maintained by other people, many of whose patches are applied without much checking to the main tree because they're 'responsible' for it, like certain architectures, driver trees etc.
Apart from the name, Linus currently has the final say of what goes in. Thats just officially. In real life it seems far more is delegated to others for different parts of the kernel, and Linus is one of the developers, far from the most active, and not really exercising his right to block patches against the majority's will.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
The article is yet another clear piece of filler that pretends to build antagonism between two important figures of the kernel project. How does this stuff keep getting accepted by Slashdot?
Is this the way Slashdot supports open source, fostering internal divides in exchange of ad eyeballs?
HAD
The question I have is, is it still possible for these kernel gurus/hackers to effectively have the kernel and all its nuances inside their head, fully functional at a theoretical/experimental level? Or does development at this point consist of sub groups that are specialized and don't require a level of understanding to 'run the kernel in your head'?
in short, it's the latter. However, keep in mind that, in a well designed system that's properly modularized, with neatly spec'd interfaces between components, it isn't always necessary for someone to have the entire picture, with all the nitty-gritty details, in their head. Instead, one need only grasp how the system operates at a high level, from a component-oriented standpoint, where each of the components themselves conforms to a particular contract.
Put another way, while Linus may not understand how the driver for a particular digital camera works, he probably does understand the interface that driver exposes, and how that interface ties in with the rest of the system.
Heh, wonder why they cut out part of Linus' post quoted at the beginning? (The original post read "just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu".)
I'm sure everyone who doesn't bother to RTFA will now think, "Oh, no, Linus and Alan are bitching each other out in public." That's nothing like what's going on here. For one, the submitter quotes only half of one particular line from the article:
So it sounds like Alan and Linus have discussed this particular difference in their talents before, either over beers at a pub, or over email or something.
Second, the article makes clear that part of what's going on is that Alan and Linus each have very different responsibilities in keeping Linux going, and so they necessarily focus on different things. Alan points out that as the dev tree maintainer, Linus is trying to keep the code maintainable, while Alan's trying to keep it stable.
And both of these things are necessary. It sounds to me like rather than being "at loggerheads", or "ready to call off the working relationship", instead Linus and Alan are a very well-matched and complementary team, both of whom contribute enormously to Linux's success and quality.
Each of them has strengths that make up for the other one's weaknesses, and it sounds like they have a good enough working relationship to give each other constructive criticism when needed.
Kai MacTane: Web developer for hire in San Francisco
The VFS is a better OO abstraction than anything you will ever come up with in your lifetime.
Uh, what? The VFS is hardly a brilliant concept, but rather the sort of abstraction that any good designer will come up with. It's also not an original Linux invention (Sun OS has had it since 1985, I think). The kernel developers also seem to have a perpetual problem with defining an interface once and defining it well. It happened to me more than once that FUSE broke during a supposedly minor kernel upgrade. For all its virtues, the Linux kernel is hardly a case study in good software engineering.