I have done work in drivers/sound: specifically, changing
drivers/sound/Config.in so that the "configure.c" program is no
longer needed; and proof-reading and debugging many of the recent
changes on the sound driver. So I figure I'm entitled to voice
an opinion on this.
> While I have no problem with private commercial distributions and
> packages, I think that everything in the public source-tree should be
> managed only with the public interest in mind.
My opinion is disgust with this "public interest" rhetoric. Hannu
Savolainen is a sovereign individual and he is entitled to set the terms
of his work. Anyone who thinks they can write a better sound driver, and
who thinks "better" includes "does not contain references to a commercial
driver by the same author", is welcome to spend lots of time writing
a new sound driver and Linus Torvalds is free to choose the driver,
or set of drivers, that he thinks best.
I'm going to say right now, as a volunteer contributor to Linux, I have
no interest in the public interest. I choose to work on it for my own
reasons. These are actually quite personal and linux-kernel is not the
place to discuss them. But "managing only with the public interest in
mind" is not one of them.
By the way, Mr. Bray, I grepped for your name in the kernel source
code and found nothing. Perhaps you have made other contributions
to free software of which I am not aware. But right now, it looks
like Hannu Savolainen is way ahead of you in contributing to the
Linux kernel.
No regards,
Michael Chastain
<mailto:mec@shout.net>
"love without fear"