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Linus Torvalds Says 'Buggy Crap' Made It Into Linux 4.8 (theregister.co.uk)

Posted by msmash on from the never-change,-linus dept.

Two days after Linus Torvalds announced the release of Linux 4.8, he began apologizing for a bug fix gone bad. The Register reports: "I'm really sorry I applied that last series from Andrew just before doing the 4.8 release, because they cause problems, and now it is in 4.8 (and that buggy crap is marked for stable too)." The "crap" in question is an attempt to fix a bug that's been present in Linux since version 3.15. Torvalds rates the fix for that bug "clearly worse than the bug it tried to fix, since that original bug has never killed my machine!" Torvalds isn't happy with kernel contributor Andrew Morton, who he says is debugging with a known bad use of BUG_ON(). "I've ranted against people using BUG_ON() for debugging in the past. Why the f*ck does this still happen?" Torvalds writes, pointing to a 2002 post to the kernel mailing list outlining how to do BUG_ON() right. He later adds "so excuse me for being upset that people still do this shit almost 15 years later."

2 of 294 comments (clear)

  1. You Tell'em Linus. by zenlessyank · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Buncha snowflakes and pop-tarts can't handle some feedback with a few 'fucks' thrown in??

    You are in the wrong damn career. Computers and their software WAS BUILT with profanity. It is part of the culture.It is just like the military. Wars are won with profanity and murder.

    If you don't want to hear it then go teach preschoolers how to color.

  2. Re:I want to be reincarnated as Linus Torvalds by Raenex · · Score: 5, Insightful

    writes a completely new UNIX-compatible OS

    He only wrote the kernel for an i386 machine. And he cloned an existing system's functionality instead of writing a new system. You know, the same thing he flamed Tridgell for.

    using a radical new software licensing scheme

    He chose GPL so he could use the already written GNU code to plug his kernel into. You know, the bulk of the code that made up the OS. I always thought Stallman was petty about trying to call Linux, "GNU/Linux", but it's posts like yours that show he had a point. A typical Linux system has vast amount of work put into it that has nothing to do with the kernel or Linus, other than they need some kernel to run on.

    attract multiple developers and users

    Yes, he did that. Mostly as a matter of right place and right time, but he deserves credit for taking the ball, running with it, and achieving success.