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Linux Kernel Developer Declares VirtualBox Driver "Crap"
An anonymous reader writes "Linux kernel developers have decided to mark the VirtualBox kernel driver as tainted crap for the significant number of problems this open-source driver has caused. The VirtualBox kernel driver reportedly causes memory corruption and other problems. With the driver being flagged as tainted crap, bug reports caused by the driver will be taken less seriously."
An anonymous coward writes
...so instead of just complaining, they could fix it and offer the patch back to Oracle.
I do believe that people who complain about problems in the Linux kernel and other open source products are often told to do just that. Why expect others to do as you say, if you won't do the same?
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." --H.L. Mencken
One of the developers wanted to flag the vbox driver as tainted to keep bug submissions on it from going to kernel devs.
this is *way* overblown.
The driver is not in the linux kernel tree and distributed separately. So name calling is quite appropriate.
"User Error: Please replace user, and try again."
My favorite error message.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Its a non-existant three dimensional cube
Um, did you even read the article?
Someone released a driver for Virtual Box, said driver causes instability and crashes.
Do you think it's the job of the Linux Kernel devs to re-tool the kernel to work around this, or do you think it's just easier to push it back to the people who wrote the driver?
I mean, seriously, from TFA:
So, if you start off with a working, stable kernel, apply this patch, and then end up with a broken, flaky kernel ... what is the conclusion other than the driver is crap?
I'm not a Linux kernel developer ... but I have had someone try to write some badly written code on top of some systems I supported, only to have them come back and start filing large amounts of bug reports ... and by the time you waste your own time to realize this has nothing to do with your own code, it's too late. Hell, I even had one occasion where someone ignored the explicit statement that it wasn't thread safe, and definitely didn't implement transactions ... only to submit a bug report whining that the transactions didn't work like he wished them to. Of course it didn't, it said right up front it didn't and never would ... but he figured if he just pretended that it did, he'd be able to force us to make it do so. How was that my fault?
If this module is leading to support issues, I can see why they'd draw the line and say "not our fault or problem".
If I wrote crappy code for a Windows app, do you think Microsoft would be willing to listen to me submitting bug reports in Windows if it was becoming readily apparent that the problem wasn't in their code? Because, that's really what this is about from the sounds of it.
I mean, really, Oracle throws poor code over the fence into production and makes the user be the beta tester ... that's not exactly new. Anyone ever seen Beehive? When I first saw it, it was a freshly steaming turd. No idea what it's like now, but at the time it was largely broken.
I don't see this so much about NIH as "WTF makes this my problem".
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The second rule is that the programmer is an idiot, especially if they don't believe in the second rule.
Actually, MS did have those reports, probably 90% of BSOD's over the years were caused by third party drivers. MS moved large chunks of the driver infrastructure into user space and for those areas where performance was deemed more important than isolating the drivers and kernel they implemented a more robust WHQL process and required drivers to be signed after WHQL testing was completed. This probably reduced the number of BSOD's experienced by 85% or so.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
My intro CS prof always told us that "The first rule of programming is.... the user is an idiot."
He's wrong. Totally, 180 degrees, wrong.
Users know what they want. They may not know all the of steps to get there, and they usually don't know all of the implications and side-effects of those steps. But they do know where they want to end up. It's the software's job to help them get there, in fact that is the one and only job of software. When a user screws up the root cause is a failure of the software to help them take the correct steps to accomplish their goals.
One might argue that there is no practical difference between a user that makes a mistake because they are an idiot and a user that makes a mistake because the application didn't help them enough. But there is a huge difference - you can't fix an idiot, but you can fix your software.
I'm not saying it's easy, in fact user interface stuff is really hard. Which, I think is one of the reasons a lot of developers take the attitude of your prof -- it is so much easier to put the responsibility somewhere else because then the developer is only responsible for "idiot-proofing" their software rather than the much harder job of designing it to enable the user.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I don't think name calling is ever really appropriate. It does not create an environment where people are willing to cooperate and work with each other. All it creates is a sense of hostility and defensiveness amongst developers.
"tainted crap" is not helpful as a term or a category in any way shape or form. All it does is send the message that you have nothing but contempt for the other contributors. That can never be helpful.
Perhaps another term, or any other term, would have been better. Terms like critical, serious, unstable, etc. They get the point across without injecting vitriol into the discussion or environment.
My intro CS prof always told us that "The first rule of programming is.... the user is an idiot."
He's wrong. Totally, 180 degrees, wrong.
Users know what they want..
Whoah, let's just stop right there. In what universe do you live in that users know what they want. Side effects and complexity aside, I have never seen a project (infrastructure OR coding) where the users didnt come in halfway through and ask for things to change because they did not understand their own damn requirements.
I have seen business process people actually break down and start yelling on the phone because Suzie and Tom insist that they said the EXACT oppisite of what they really said during the vetting of the processes to be built into the ERP software. I have personally lost sleep because a user changed the requirements for the sizing of a data warehouse a week before go live..
Users ARE idiots. So are developers and administrators, but at least most of us realize it and admit to it.
Parts of VirtualBox are open source.
Correct
If you want to network boot your VM by PXE, you need to pony up the cash for the closed source version maintained by Oracle.
The non-open source parts of virtual box are free as in beer. That said, PXE isn't a part of it, USB peripherals are.
The open source version supposedly supports PXE boot, but I was never able to make that version work with our environment.
Have you tried getting PXE working with the proprietary virtualbox? I suspect it won't work either, and that the problem is that VirtualBox doesn't like your PXE setup, not that they're trying to force you into the proprietary version.
As with MySQL, open source contributions to dual licensed software are not frequent nor great. With someone like Oracle at the helm, community cooperation with their free and open version is even further diminished.
As much as I would generally agree with you about Oracle, they really haven't screwed up VirtualBox at all since they bought Sun. In fact, it's been seeing pretty good development with the addition of some nice features.