[fab] kernel modules

[Rahul]

Jason L Tibbitts III wrote:
>>>>>> "MS" == Max Spevack <mspevack at redhat.com> writes:
> 
> MS> The prevailing sentiment is that the engineers most directly
> MS> impacted by the decision are not in favor of kernel modules, and I
> MS> think we need to trust the technical expertise of the people who
> MS> will be doing the work.
> 
> While that's true, we have to accept the fact that users will if
> necessary acquire their kernel modules from somewhere, thus presenting
> the same problems to the Core kernel developers.  The end result is
> that the user is further inconvenienced and nobody gains anything.
> (Indeed, the situation could be worse if the source of the modules is
> less well-maintained than Extras.)
> 
>  - J<

There is certainly a difference between users grabbing packages from 
third party repositories vs including them in Fedora Extras.  If we 
include anything in the formal Fedora repositories , we need to accept 
the responsibility to support it properly. If Kernel modules are 
included in extras, the core kernel team needs to be able to debug any 
issues and work with them. Though Red Hat has a pretty big kernel team, 
the number of people who directly deal with kernel bug reports in Fedora 
is not high. Other than major issues, things are usually fixed by 
providing an update to the next kernel. Given the fast pace of kernel 
updates in Fedora Core and the lack of no stable in kernel API/ABI for 
kernel modules, any extras kernel modules will likely break often. If we 
are going to hold back changes until we get the kernel modules that we 
include in Fedora Extras working well with the latest upstream kernel 
that we intend to provide as a update in Fedora Core, that would very 
severely restrict or entirely stop us from providing any major kernel 
updates after a Fedora general release.

Dave Jones and others have clearly stated that they have no interest in 
additional work debugging any issues that might possibly arise from the 
user using any non-upstream kernel modules even if they are GPL'ed and 
included in Fedora Extras. Moreover anyone maintaining Fedora Extras So 
if we do decide to include the modules anyway, we would be left with a 
situation where Fedora on the whole isnt even willing to support what it 
provides. On the other hand, if those modules are good enough for the 
core kernel team to support them, it would make better sense to just 
include them in the core kernel package instead.

Rahul