Personally I think they owe David and the other developers a hell of a
lot more than apologies. Like monetary gifts and/or indentured
slavitude. If all the bitchy people had just just up, sat back and had
the patients to wait just a couple more days David would have had 2.0.31
put together and distributed.
So to all those that whined and bitched about 2.0.X development being
too slow and mishandled (which it wasn't)...
well done... JERKS!
You managed to screw *everyone* that was patiently waiting for 2.0.31 to
fix their problems. So now everything suffers...
All the patch developers (who had the brains and time to do the work
that the bitchy people whined for) have to redo a lot of their work to
ease Linus' burden.
2.0.31 now won't include as many bug fixes and updates as it might have
since Linus (appropriately) will only fix the fatal problems like the
buffer cache.
the 2.1.X tree will fall behind a little now since you've forced Linus
to spend time on 2.0 (which other people like David were willing to
handle until the bitchy people ticked him off)
so in the end 2.2 (3.0?) will farther down the road.
> > In short, I would like to have all the final versions, and I'd like to
> > have _only_ the buffer-cache related stuff. You can pretty much assume
> > that I'm working off a clean 2.0.30 - ignore any pre-patches by David.
>
> David was looking at newer drivers for the 3c900 serial ethernet
> cards as well. Due to some dust-up over some recent drivers, it was a
> debate as to whether the 0.30-all driver with some patches went into the
> kernel OR the latest driver (currently 0.42 and reasonably stable) went
> it. The 0.40 version of drivers/net/3c59x.c was radioactive. The 0.41 was
> better, especially with a few patches. The 0.42 driver incorporates those
> patches, but Donald Becker has reported that he is still working at getting
> down to the root cause of some stray problems. In this religious war, I'm
> very much on the 0.42 side of things. I've got it in numerous systems and
> it's been very stable. The 0.30 driver does not provide the performance on
> 100MB links. As far as I can determine amongst the dozens of Linux systems
> I've got at home and at the office, 0.42 seems to be as stable as 0.30-all
> and is a better performer to boot.
>
> > ALSO! If people made other, non-buffer-cache related patches and sent them
> > to David, please consider them lost. I do have Davids patches but I want
> > to look over the separate patches rather than the one humongous patch I
> > have now. Again, please summarize exactly why you think the patch is
> > needed: and you can pretty much assume that I'm unwilling to apply any
> > patches that aren't obviously _really_ needed.
>
> > NOTE NOTE NOTE! The above sounds like I want others to do as much work for
> > 2.0.31 as possible, and that's exactly correct. I hope that nobody is
> > offended by having to re-do work they already did, but think of what I
> > have to go through.. Most of the patch-creators at least have to re-do
> > only one patch (their own), while I will have to go through a lot of
> > patches from many sources. That is why I want to try to get others to do
> > as much as possible before I then distill the final 2.0.31.
>
> Sounds like a manager to me (and a good one at that). :-)
I can't work on the kernel code directly since my limited knowledge
would be more of a hindrance than a help.
I would be willing to collect and organize any and all patches that
people have. But I think others are already doing this. To many
cooks... But if they aren't or there is a need for someone to collect
and organize patches then I offer whatever help I can give.
>
> > This is what people get for being difficult to David. I may be a lot more
> > thick-skinned than David, but because of that I'm also a lot more bitchy.
>
> WAY TO GO! That's exactly the way I have to be at the office with
> about 4 dozen engineers in the department. That's the only way to survive
> with your sanity intact. Senior Engineer is a job position with all the
> responsibilities of a monitor at a kindegarden recess!
>
> The people who bitched at David got exactly what they deserved,
> longer delays in the release cycle. And since none of them have ponied
> up to help out, I have no sympathy. Unfortunately, the rest of us got
> caught up as collateral damage in their excerise in optical rectitus. I
> still suspect that some of it was deliberate antagonism by subversives, but
> I'm paranoid anyways. Remember what Heinlein said - "Even paranoids have
> enemies".
I don't think there was any subversiveness going on but I do think that
the *VERY* small vocal minority got themselves heard. Unfortunately I
also find that the vocal minority also tends to be from the shallow end
of the gene pool.
I'll wait forever for 2.0.31, I'm not one of the bickering crowd, BUT I
still apologize to David, Linus and the other developers for their
behavior. You have provided the entire world with a fabulous product
and you efforts certainly show.
>
> > List of patches currently applied to my tree:
> > - axp math bits by Richard Henderson
> > - init_tty patch by Bill Hawes
>
> > That's it,
>
> Plus the 3c59x.c patches... Pretty please... :-) I WILL help out
> there anyway I can!
>
> > Linus
>
> Regards,
> Mike
> --
> Michael H. Warfield | (770) 985-6132 | mhw@WittsEnd.com
> (The Mad Wizard) | (770) 925-8248 | http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/
> NIC whois: MHW9 | An optimist believes we live in the best of all
> PGP Key: 0xDF1DD471 | possible worlds. A pessimist is sure of it!
- Jeff Wiegley