On Thu, 29 Dec 2005, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
Linus Torvalds wrote:
We're not talking about internal kernel stuff. Internal kernel stuff _does_Start caring. People spend lots of money supporting you, and what you are
get changed, and we dont' care about breakage of out-of-kernel stuff. That's
fundamental.
doing. How about taking some responsibility for that [...]
Cry me a river, Jeff.
The kernel is GPL'd. That's my responsibility. Source code. Stuff that comes to me as patches. That's my job, and that's what I get paid for. In fact, my contract says that I _cannot_ work on anything that isn't open source.
Stuff outside the kernel is almost always either (a) experimental stuff that just isn't ready to be merged or (b) tries to avoid the GPL.
Neither is worth a _second_ of anybodys time trying to support, and when you say "people spend lots of money supporting you", you're lying through your teeth. The GPL-avoiding kind of people don't spend a dime supporting me, they spend their money actively trying to debase and destroy what I and thousands of others have been working our butts off for.
So don't try to make it sound like something it isn't. We support outside projects a hell of a lot better than we'd need to, and I can tell you that it's mostly _me_ who does that. Most of the core kernel developers argue that I should support less of it - and yes, they are backed up by lawyers at their (sometimes quite big) companies.
So be honest now. Are those projects you care about going to be GPL'd and actively pushed back into the standard kernel?
And if they aren't, SHUT THE HELL UP, because they are total freeloaders, and claimign that they "support" me is total crap.
Linus