Re: 2.0.31 : please!

Jes Degn Soerensen (jds@kom.auc.dk)
16 Jul 1997 12:45:08 +0200


>>>>> "Daniel" == Daniel G Link <scrooge@cyclone.snafu.de> writes:

Daniel> Hi, I find the handling of criticism in this thread
Daniel> disturbing.

Daniel> The way some people handled the opinions of others is more
Daniel> reminiscent of some political party than a free exchange of
Daniel> thoughts.

We are not trying to ban criticism or anything closely related to
that. I have the feeling that most kernel hackers accept critics and
use it as inspiration _when_ its justified.

However, the thing that started all this was _not_ the fact that some
people asked for a new version of the kernel since they felt that
pre-2.0.31-2 was fairly stable. The reason for all this mess was the
way the criticism made, which was extremely unfair to the people who
spend large amounts of time trying to track these problems down so we
can all enjoy a new and even better kernel.

First of all people must understand that most of the bugs left in
2.0.x are pretty sophisticated and are thus very hard to track down
and solve. It requires a lot of effort and testing and people who
don't want to contribute have to be patient and shut up. By
contributing I don't mean that people have to hack the kernel 24hrs a
day, testing and ideas are welcome as well, but unjustified criticism
is not welcome.

Dave just announced that he had devoted the next week to working on
2.0.31. Then one really can't blame him for getting pissed off when
someone who is obviously totally clueless as to what is going on
inside the kernel, states that he knows better. If this persons feels
like starting his own project based on Linux then feel free, the
source is GPL'ed, but go somewhere else.

Ok Dave's reaction was a bit strong IMHO, but still I don't blame
him. Instead I blame people who come here with no clue at all and
think they know how to save the world. We can just hope that Dave
reconsiders and decides to help solving the remaining 2.0.x problems.

Jes