Linux-kernel mailing list archive 1999-37,: Re: Accountability

# Re: Accountability

Mike A. Harris (mharris@meteng.on.ca)
Tue, 14 Sep 1999 19:01:41 -0400 (EDT)

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On Wed, 15 Sep 1999, Colin McCormack wrote:

>> Feel free to be his marketing front man. I do however think you are 4 weeks
>> late for 2.4
>
>>From one marketing front man to another: I respect your desire to keep the
>brand name pure, but what's in a number? Something for real marketing front
>men to put on a press release? What's it got to do with the *other* use to
>which one might put Linux ... experimenting with new features?

Alan is hardly a marketing front man for anything in here. I
don't know why you'd make such a comment. Alan is a very
important part of kernel development and maintenance. Pot shots
at him over such a trivial issue are pointless indeed.

>What'd be really nice would be a system where people could directly submit
>branch material, others could selectively check out branches, and still others
>could (if they wished) re-join the branches.

Feel free to design such a system. I'm sure the developers would
love to use it, and would very much appreciate your efforts to
give back into the Linux community for all it has given you.

>Linus could bless branches, so could you, but people should be able to roll
>their own to a much greater extent, if Linux is to maintain any kind of
>growing edge.

Just let us know when your system is ready, I'd be glad to beta
test it for you. As it stands right now, people can roll their
own kernel to EVERY extent. Patches are freely available
wherever their authors put them up for download. Alan Cox
integrates several patches into his AC series of kernels, as well
as arca kernels being available and a number of others. Andre
Hedrick has IDE patches available, and many others have patches
available as well.

Some people take many of the patches that are out there and
integrate them into a big mother-patch. You can download these
and try them as well.

I believe Riley Williams, or someone on this list with a name
starting with "R" has collected the entire Linux kernel source
tarballs all into a huge CVS tree and made it available online,
and on CDR as well. You could likely easily integrate other
patches into this tree too.

>Another lesson from history is the gcc/egcs development.

I don't see how gcc stagnation and egcs takeover pertains to
Linux at all.

>I'd say Linux's in the balance now, but if I were intimately
>involved with the kernel, I'd be open-sourcing it as quickly as
>possible.

Open-sourcing? How much more "open source" can you GET? The
linux kernel is probably the largest open source project that has
ever existed with such magnitude, and open development. This
mailing list is proof of that. Every kernel is released for
everyone to view, as are the prereleases in between ALL kernel
versions such as 2.2.x-pre1, pre2, etc... In addition, most if
not all patches that are included in the pre patches, as well as
tonnes of others that don't get included for some reason or
another, are also posted to the list, and a lot of those are also
made available for download via web/ftp.

I can't see any reason why you think linux isn't as open
source as it gets - other than the possibility that you just have
not taken the time to open your eyes and research it thouroughly
before going off...

Another $0.02.

Linux IMHO _IS_ the true definition of open source.

    --
    Mike A. Harris                                     Linux advocate
    Computer Consultant                                  GNU advocate
    Capslock Consulting                          Open Source advocate

    Ya dee buckity, rum ting tee toooo, mi - mi - mi, yaaooooooo....
    					(King Otto)

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