>> bugs that may be caused by closed source software. My point
>> however is that like it or not, VMWARE is here, and is going to
>> be used by more and more people. More commercial software will
>
>VMware is fine. If you have any problem with vmware modules loaded, run
>a test without them and if you can't duplicate it tell vmware.
>
>> create a large demand for the proprietary extension or whatever,
>> and in fact lessen the number of people using "pure" kernels
>> dramatically, and thus lower the numbers of potential people who
>> would otherwise fit the "debugging is parallelizeable" paradigm.
>
>So if you add lots of crap to your box it falls over. Thats _your_ problem
>or your vendors problem. If you have a Red Hat kernel problem and you have
>a support deal you go demand they fix it. They sold it to you. If you don't
>you stick it in Bugzilla and they might fix it for you
>
>Ditto for SuSE, Mandrake and everyone else.
>
>There is a real incentive for vendors not to fiddle with the tree unless
>they think they know what they are doing. The resource overhead it creates
>them is significant.
No, you misunderstand me Alan. I'm not complaining about
anything, I'm just forseeing a potential problem. I agree with
everything that you've said above, and I completely understand
the reasons. What I am saying is that if less people use plain
out of the box Penguin Pee(TM) kernels, then you guys will get
less bug reports, and the main tree threatens to be less used,
perhaps with some other party taking over the widespread kernel.
This would be BAD because they more than likely would not
maintain the high level of stability, etc.. that Linus, yourself,
et al. maintain, and they definitely would have alterior motives
besides technical superiority.
There is nothing at all that we can do about the scenario I
described, other than stepping up advocacy of free and open
projects which are created to replace commercial alternatives
such as VMware, and other kernel add ons.
Question: What is the likelyhood of RedHat hiring the
"Freemware" guys? Hmm.. That would be cool for the "VMware is
too cool" side of things. I think I'm going to suggest it on the
RH mailing lists...
Just an idea... Personally, the first thing I do after
installing RedHat is ditch the kernel. I roll my own from
official unpatched source. The only time I stray is to apply a
bug patch, or try an AC kernel. I am leary of anything else...
I would like to see the ONE kernel we have STAY that way period,
and not have a billion forks or patches. As such, I strongly
believe that any major subsystem out there that is an addon, that
is in widespread use, and is stable, etc.. should be integrated
into the kernel somehow. Perhaps someone could act as a liason
to promote an author to submit and resubmit a patch until it is
in an acceptable state, and gets in? I dunno.. just more ideas.
It seems that this is exactly what has happened allready for USB,
ISDN, PCMCIA, PnP, and other things, so maybe I'm a little
concerned for no reason...
What are the chances: If Freemware requires kernel modules like
vmware does - what are the chances of a kernel mod being accepted
into the kernel proper - if as has been said, the modules would
export critical stuff to userland?...
Take care,
TTYL
-- Mike A. Harris Linux advocate Computer Consultant GNU advocate Capslock Consulting Open Source advocateJoin the FreeMWare project - the goal to produce a FREE program in which you can run Windows 95/98/NT, and other operating systems.
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