This isn't the Alan Cox I used to know -- the one that went out of his
way to put Linux first and was the good samaritan of Linux Kernel. I
think all the money is making folks a little nuts, and we are seeing the
natural fallout of this -- hell, these guys are all under 30 (most of
them). I think Linux is close to the point that it will fragment and
break into many smaller efforts. I can feel it starting.
".... Success can test a man's metal more surely than the strongest
adverary ..."
Jeff
David Weinehall wrote:
>
> On Tue, 8 Feb 2000, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
>
> >
> > Alan,
> >
> > Contract? What the hell is this? I have been observing what goes on
> > here now for almost 18 months, and from my vantage point, it's clear
> > that RedHat just sits at the mouth of each womb ready to devour every
> > baby that is born like a pack of hungry, ravaging wolves. Everyone
> > tries their best ot put on a happy face while they knife each other in
> > the back and plot and scheme ways to rip each other off, and shaft each
> > other in the Linux Community.
>
> ... Red Hat is no other that any other company, apart from that they
> have a larger interest in it's field of business. They want to employ
> the very best. This is quite natural; if they didn't, they would betray
> their stockholder's trust.
>
> No backstabbing is going on as far as I can tell. This far, the only
> non-respectable company I've noticed in the Linux-business would be
> Linux-One, which seems (to say the least) very rotten. But they are no
> real part of the Linux-community anyway.
>
> > This is why Linux will ***ALWAYS*** be inferior to Windows NT/2000. It
> > can only be as good as the people who write it, and when they're second
> > rate unix hackers, that's the ceiling on the quality level of the
> > effort. Anyone who suggest any direction that's not understandble by
> > you "gods" gets ignored, knifed, bad mouthed, or character assisinated,
> > and if what's proposed is not undergrad unix computer science, you guys
> > don't seem to understand it, or care (and you show a definite
> > unwillingness to even try).
>
> If you call people like Alan Cox, Alexander Viro, Peter Anvin, Linus
> Torvalds, etc. second-rate Unix-hackers, you've proved that you are
> definitely not in a position to have a company of your own. It's amasing
> that your customers trust you.
>
> I hope you don't mean what the letter of your mail says.
>
> I don't know what suggestions you've come with that people haven't
> accepted; as far as I can tell (and I try to read everything posted on
> the lkml), people have been welcoming your move to port NWFS to Linux.
>
> Linux is not Win 2K. I am thankful for that. I think most Linux-users
> are. It might be easier for you to port NWFS if the VFS was rewritten to
> be more similar to the one of Win 2K, but that would also mean that
> we'd miss many other things we want.
>
> > One good example is the VFS in Linux. EVERY release, you guys break
> > something or there is MASSIVE file system corruption, or memory
> > corruption, or some other catastrophe that takes days to sort out.
>
> The VFS is NEVER rewritten during stable kernel-releases. If you use
> unstable releases, you should be aware of the risk for corruption/
> memory-corruption and other bad things.
>
> Sure thing, it is not easy for a completely new file-system to go into
> an unstable kernel, because it's a changing target, and this is why
> new file-systems usually should be introduced in the beginning or
> end of a cycle, where changes are to important subsystems.
>
> > Commercial OS vendors never tolerate this lack of
> > quality/compatibility. I'm sorry if you are offended, and i withdraw
> > the allegations (man did I get your dander up -- jeeeeez), but we are
> > spending money on developing on Linux, and the obvious lack of COURTESY,
> > PROFESSIONALISM, and QUALITY increases support effort (I have to rewrite
> > the VFS interface EVERYTIME you post a new kernel. You guys are
> > constantly BREAKING stuff and LEAVING IT BROKEN and inflicting your
> > laziness and bugs on the entire planet. If a Microsoft engineer (or
> > Novell engineer) operated at this level of quality, they would have
> > their work heavily scrutinized.
>
> Commercial OS-vendors instead tolerate high levels of
> performance-degrading misdesigns, instead of removing them, just for the
> sake of keeping their VFS intact. Even more vital flaws are sometimes
> left in because of this.
>
> Courtesy? Is your e-mail a sign of courtesy? In the Linux-world we are
> all measured by the quality of our code, not by our titles or the place
> we work at.
>
> Professionalism? Do you REALLY consider it professional to leave vital
> flaws in an operating system just to please developers, developers that
> have access to the source-code of the operating system and the possibility
> to affect the development of it themselves?
>
> Quality? And you mention Microsoft in the same e-mail? Allow me to
> laugh... Muahahaha. I don't consider an operating-system where
> beta-versions that are SOLD to the public eats your filesystem to be
> of much Quality.
>
> Breaking Stuff? Yes, that happens quite often. But virtually never during
> a stable kernel-series. Breaking things during development is a necessity
> to get an overall better product in the end. For instance, the breaking
> of the VFS in v2.3 was necessary to get good SMP-performance.
>
> Leaving it broken? This only happens with subsystems/drivers that have
> no maintainer and with code that we know will change soon again anyway.
>
> NTFS is broken (for all I know) in v2.3. And nobody has enough knowledge
> to fix it properly. Your company has, yet you haven't made any effort in
> that direction. Now why haven't you?! Because you haven't got time? Well,
> maybe those you accuse of being lazy don't have time either? Ever thought
> of that?
>
> Inflicting bugs upon the entire planet?!! And you dare to say that
> Microsoft doesn't? The only difference here, is that when Microsoft does
> so, it takes 200 bug-reports and 12 months for a bug-fix to arrive, while
> there usually are inofficial patches available withing a few days in the
> Linux-case, and a completely new kernel within a month.
>
> Now go figure what is better.
>
> I'm still thinking that the port of NWFS to Linux is a good thing.
> I do not think your totally unbalanced posts on this list is, however.
>
> /David Weinehall
> _ _
> // David Weinehall <tao@acc.umu.se> /> Northern lights wander \\
> // Project MCA Linux hacker // Dance across the winter sky //
> \> http://www.acc.umu.se/~tao/ </ Full colour fire </
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