>Is the work done bespoke or in support of some company objective?
Both.
>Is the work done critical for support or done for PR reasons?
Yes, the work is critical to the project. PR reasons? What? Its trivial to check what kind of code they're committing.
>It is ludicrous to suggest that corporate largesse alone is responsible for the Linux kernel.
Why? It is ludicrous to suggest otherwise.
Do you realize the scale of operations for a project like Linux? Do you know who is paying for all the hardware compatibility testing? You don't just say "it works on my machine" and call it a day. Linux isn't an amateur OSS project. You need to make sure that after every single release, the code actually works on the 94,000 different Motherboard/CPU/GPU/RAM/BIOS combinations. Redhat, Novel, Oracle, etc fund all of this.
>Without the non for profit work, I'd dare say you'd be working on/with your enhanced MS-2014 Pro Servers software or some BSD variant on a VT100 terminal.
And without the proprietary design of UNIX to copy, would an OS like Linux even exist? See? Using hypotheticals to reason is a pointless exercise.
>OpenSSL is another example of open source that is widely used. A lot of companies use it, make money off it yet few contributed resources.
Way to shoot yourself in the foot. OpenSSL needs funding precisely because of the heartbleed bug. It demonstrates that the lack of money in an OSS project can result in a less than optimial quality product.
>Even if those donations continue to arrive at the same rate indefinitely (they won’t), and even though every penny of those funds goes directly to OpenSSL team members, it is nowhere near enough to properly sustain the manpower levels needed to support such a complex and critical software product.
Not in my opinion. In my opinion, Gnome, KDE, Ubuntu and many others are self-destructing in an effort to imitate Apple's design without understanding it, and generating a good amount of bullshit in the process.
I don't think anyone here is suggesting that companies==bullshit. There's nothing wrong with smart employees of big companies contributing to the kernel. In many cases it's mutually beneficial so it's the rational thing to do. On the other hand, it seems to be very hard to create a big corporation without letting bullshit fester. Linux is not controlled by the sort of people that thrive on bullshit. But could it fall under their control in the future? Sure.
> I do believe there is a spirit of open source. Like, if everyone in the world behaved the “worst” they could while fulfilling all legal obligations, nothing would be functional at all anywhere.
Yeah, tell me about it, did I fail to mention I actually write widely used open source software, as opposed to the original complainer whose profile indicates little open source activity?
> In that vein, I hope they do contribute upstream where it makes sense to, at the very minimum, like applicable bug fixes.
And where’s the evidence that they aren’t already doing so? Where’s even the evidence that X410 is repackaging? I don’t know either way, but gp just started trashing the software because they sell licenses for 50 bucks a pop, which is not evidence for anything.
>I don't understand why people want corporations to behave like non-profits. It's a corporation whose sole aim is make profit. But that doesn't mean they can't do something for goodwill that actually benefits the community.
Because people act like they're altruistic and nice when the reality is that they're not. I'm not gonna suck your dick because you pulled a PR stunt, I don't swing that way.
>What does this have anything to do with them doing something good for the community?
On the surface level more support for linux is good thing, but like all corporate-developed software it eventually becomes bloated and unstable and dies a slow death.
> And they have employed and still do employ many top tier open source developers who contribute open source code to a variety of projects. The money they make makes all of open source better!
I have to question that.
Nearly all of my worst experiences when using Linux have involved software that they or their developers have, to the best of my knowledge, been significantly involved with creating.
I'm thinking of software like systemd, PulseAudio, NetworkManager, GNOME 3, and Wayland, for example.
I've wasted far too much of my time dealing with unnecessary, silly, and inexcusable problems involving such software.
What makes it even worse is that despite me trying to avoid their ecosystem, their software has unfortunately still made it into other major distros, including Debian.
> You can end up with poorly written code generated by unqualified people that addresses short term business needs. Such code tends to be abandoned quickly by its sponsor which causes long term maintenance problems. In the Linux ecosystem, stuff tends to go bad quietly in the darkness.
Care to provide an example of this? I've heard critiques of Linux's model that were basically FUD attempts by others in the past, that sound strikingly similar to this sentence. The FUD was about security holes that could be "snuck" into the code, when no one was looking.
For anyone with a cursory knowledge of the actual process, there is an understanding that this generally cannot and does not happen. The process is specifically design to keep 'poorly written code' from entering in the kernel.
You may be talking about user-space. There, the code quality is largely a function of the maintainers and their processes. No specific OSes user space is immune to this, c.f. OpenSSL.
So, put another way, I'm not buying that argument.
> The BSDs run off of good old fashioned ego driven software development done by people who care deeply about software.
This may be the most cringe-worthy statement I've seen posted on HN in a while. Ego/hero driven development is an antipattern you would like to avoid. Suppose your hero/massive ego person decides that they don't like X, being some thing that industry as a whole, has adopted. As a result, no progress is made on X, proposals to deal with X have been generally slapped down, or slow walked. Because the ego/hero involved doesn't like it.
This isn't theoretical for me, I've seen this upfront and personal recently. This attitude, combined with several co-morbid positions, lead to outcomes that no one wants.
To get the code ready for when the hardware is available.
> I get that the corporations employ the maintainers of this code, but if that person quits or the company discontinues a product, now we're left with useless crap in the kernel. Why can't these companies just build their own modules? Why is it everyone else's problem?
A lot of companies and individuals can step up to maintain the code once it's there and working. If it's important, they will and they have. Only dead-dead systems like the 80386 get removed; or, in this case, vaporware that never materialized to begin with.
Modules are bad because they're code that isn't subject to the same review as normal kernel code, may be closed-source or under some obnoxious license, and probably is going to be more difficult to install than just a kernel update.
So we want it to be "everyone else's problem" because that means anyone else can step up if a company fires the people maintaining the code for hardware the kernel team still wants to support. With a module, it might be the case that the module only works on some range of kernels and is very difficult to replicate its functionality on more modern ones once the original company drops out. That's not a good position to be in if you rely on being able to run modern Linux on that hardware.
> Not if Linus decided that, if the Linux Foundation decided that they wanted to go commercial. See the mailing list message of Linux against deep integration between the kernel and systemd!
Why not? Do you pay them for their time? I don't. So who am I, what do they owe me? Nothing. Not even a new free version of linux.
>Read my previous comment: The beauty of proprietary software is that you can exactly do that - take the last public version, patch it and make something better, something that's more the way you like it, no matter what the original owner thinks, says or does. :)
No, actually you can't. You're not entitled to unless you specifically sought a license that permits it. All Open Source Licenses grant you that permission.
> I still have no idea what this project is trying to do exactly.
Raise funds, basically.
Getting too specific about their development plans would interfere with that. People spend money based on emotion and shiny things. Yes, even Linux users.
>Does it change your perspective that this was aimed at a private audience?
Was it? Someone leaked the article to the press. Per the article, someone granted permission to publish the leak. I'm assuming that someone had standing to give said permission, either from Google Research or being the author. I can see a scenario when someone intentionally 'leaks' in order to put something in the public sphere without attribution. Perhaps I'm too uncharitable or too cynical.
Still, I find the underlying argument too simplistic.
At $WORK, we have some $SOFTWARE that certain $CLIENTS run on Windows Server. It would be cheaper if they ran it on Linux. I have good confidence it would work the same, and we could test with the typical deployment patterns. The typical $CLIENT attitude is to not even think about this ("We don't have anyone to manage a Linux deployment, and $$client of $CLIENT wouldn't even hear of Linux, we barely got a current deployment plan approved").
Arguing that Open Source Linux could do everything that Windows Server can or that Linux development speed is higher wouldn't do anything to change their mind - it's based on other factors, and even if we finally got past that there would be ROI to consider (compared to other things that could be done in the same time).
> Most people are not going to see the context of that statement.
Most people are never going to contribute to the Linux kernel in the first place. Anyone who is likely to, is likely to 1) actually get at least some cursory knowledge about the community and the process, 2) not deal directly with Linus until they've spent a lot of time getting up to scratch, including submitting patches to sub-system maintainers, 3) get only polite responses from Linus if/when they do deal with him.
I don't think Linus has any reasons at all to be concerned about whether or not people see the context of the statement. The people who don't are not likely to affect his ability to do his job.
> All he did in that matter is make himself look bad and, to a degree, made his project look bad.
Any reasons why Linus should care?
> As it's been stated elsewhere, such actions most likely just drives people away.
Linux does not have a problem with lack of developers trying to get stuff into the kernel. If it drives away some good people, then so be it. If it makes some shitty developers think twice about ignoring repeated admonitions from Linus, then it seems to me like good use of his time.
> A public lashing with this type of language should not be considered healthy for the project nor the open source movement. It only causes negativity within and towards the project with the additional issue, as you show yourself, of not always actually solving the problem.
From my point of view, the negativity tends to show up in discussions like this, rather than in forums where people are actually concerned with these projects. The level of desire for political correctness annoys me greatly. I find a lot of the responses here far worse than the direct language Linus sometimes uses because of insinuations and underlying implications of the statements.
>Linux is developed almost exclusively by people who get paid for their work. Billions of dollars of real money has been poured by IBM, Intel, RH, etc. You are thoroughly confused my friend. Lets stick with the original point.
What aren't you getting? Developing is not auditing. KPMG wasn't paid to do banking, they were just paid to audit.
>So explain how they audited the firm, explain which data they had access to and how they were incompetent
As an auditing firm you either demand enough data to do a real audit or you walk away from the deal. So either they didn't have enough data or they were sell-outs rubber stamping it. That's just how auditing works.
>People will ask you to backup your opinion. Its completely fine to say I don't know...
It's not an opinion. It's literally what they are paid to do. If I pay for a hamburger and someone just gives me a pile of sand, any bystander can tell that the seller didn't do their job.
> seeing their original massive OSS project now only achieve what's 'required' and nothing more
If they were only doing "what's required" they would have ditched their upstream first approach to fixes and the only ones seeing their code would be paying customers, or people who the paying customers distributed the code to. The fact that they are still one of the primary contributors not only to the upstream linux kernel but countless other open source projects pretty much by definition means that they are still going well above and beyond "what's required". If you don't like their direction, fine, but pretending like they are entirely freeloading and doing nothing for the broader open source community really weakens your position.
> > It seems like they’re only interested in OSS when a) they get credit, and b) for only fixing problems that affect them.
> You don't know that.
From TFA:
> He said (paraphrasing): "Sorry, I like my version better. If you want to be a Linux kernel contributor, here’s an issue you could fix." I found this really perplexing and insulting. Instead of getting recognized for fixing the issue, he wanted to give me more work to do.
>I can’t empathise with the author. It seems like they’re only interested in OSS when a) they get credit, and b) for only fixing problems that affect them.
Most people want credit for their work. People enjoy recognition for the things they do, though not all people crave it.
As for part b), isn't that exactly the attitude encouraged in snide style by OSS advocates whenever someone complains about the function or quality of an open source project?
"If you don't like behavior x, you can fork it and fix it yourself <smiley face>"
So someone does some work that many don't do, did it for free, and wants to see their name somewhere on the patch note. Sounds reasonable to me. If that gets more people (self) interested in maintaining one of the world's most important software projects, okay.
>need to be more polite about rejecting low quality work is puzzling to me.
First, it's not low quality
Second, for sure you have to be polite if you don't pay him (but even when you do, you should)
Third, imagine a 16yo get smashed like that (not that i say he is) and what a devastating and demotivating thing that could be...welcome to the linux world
Overall, those Superstar Linux dev's are mostly ignorant borderline autistic assholes who can't develop a good Filesystem like XFS or ZFS from scratch, then moan about Nvidia, but work on a computer with around ~100 proprietary systems called firmware. One accusing the OpenBSD peoples for being masturbating security Monkeys just to say (4-6 years later) that they where right (a super rare occasion for a linux super star). You know what i like to say? FUCK YOU LINUX, FUCK YOU GNU (but not grep...gnu grep is nice)
And that's perfectly fine, it's open source software. Either way someone gets paid to look at the patches, which is my point.
If you want to do it in a cost-effective manner, you'll find other people with the same requirements, since the work result is "shareable".
> […] instead of the organization that deliberately hinders these efforts.
There is no such organization, and it feels like you have very little understanding of the organizational (and funding) structures behind the Linux kernel. I really can't extend my comments into a full-blown explanation of this, sorry.
(No, the Linux Foundation does not perform the role you're implying: they don't currently and likely never will sell a "clean feed".)
> Fewer organisations willing to cooperate with them[…]
I have no data on this but it is entirely reasonable (and I believe it likely) that the current behavior was requested (or encouraged) of involved organisations and people by cooperating organisations and people.
Both.
>Is the work done critical for support or done for PR reasons?
Yes, the work is critical to the project. PR reasons? What? Its trivial to check what kind of code they're committing.
>It is ludicrous to suggest that corporate largesse alone is responsible for the Linux kernel.
Why? It is ludicrous to suggest otherwise.
Do you realize the scale of operations for a project like Linux? Do you know who is paying for all the hardware compatibility testing? You don't just say "it works on my machine" and call it a day. Linux isn't an amateur OSS project. You need to make sure that after every single release, the code actually works on the 94,000 different Motherboard/CPU/GPU/RAM/BIOS combinations. Redhat, Novel, Oracle, etc fund all of this.
>Without the non for profit work, I'd dare say you'd be working on/with your enhanced MS-2014 Pro Servers software or some BSD variant on a VT100 terminal.
And without the proprietary design of UNIX to copy, would an OS like Linux even exist? See? Using hypotheticals to reason is a pointless exercise.
>OpenSSL is another example of open source that is widely used. A lot of companies use it, make money off it yet few contributed resources.
Way to shoot yourself in the foot. OpenSSL needs funding precisely because of the heartbleed bug. It demonstrates that the lack of money in an OSS project can result in a less than optimial quality product.
>Even if those donations continue to arrive at the same rate indefinitely (they won’t), and even though every penny of those funds goes directly to OpenSSL team members, it is nowhere near enough to properly sustain the manpower levels needed to support such a complex and critical software product.
http://veridicalsystems.com/blog/of-money-responsibility-and...
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