Kernel Modules in Fedora -x

[David Woodhouse]

On Fri, 2007-08-03 at 21:49 +0200, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
> But you seem to be really interested in this topic and you are in the
> committee that is planing to kick kmod's, so it's IMHO your job to ask
> the Board for its opinion as it allowed kmod#s again not that long ago.

I thought the Board said FESCo would have the right to approve or deny
kmod packages. So all FESCo needs to do is say 'no' to them all :)

> > [...]
> >>>> I'm just wondering in general about the current happenings -- some
> >>>> months ago the Board issued a statement to allow kmods but now a
> >>>> new FESCo shoots it down again. Well, not my business as well.  
> >>> We're not saying no to non-upstream kernel modules, which is at the
> >>> heart of what the board wants (at least from my understanding of the
> >>> topic).  All we're doing is trying to redefine the delivery
> >>> mechanism so that it is easier for all parties involved.  
> >> And davej indicated that he does not want more out-of-kernel modules.
> >> That fact and the "at least from my understanding of the topic" IMHO
> >> makes it worth to ask the Board for its opinion.
> > 
> > Having just had a conversation with Davej on irc, I can offer these
> > tidbits:
> > [...]
> > So it looks like Dave is absolutely willing to let out of tree kernel
> > modules in, so long as they have a hope of going upstream, or a really
> > really really good reason why we should continue carrying it forward.

Which is hardly a surprising result, since we've been doing it that way
for years.

> Which leaves a lot of modules out. zaptel,

$DEITY yes, we don't want to be shipping Zaptel until/unless they get
off their wossname and make it mergable upstream. There's a _reason_
we're shipping Callweaver (which dropped the crappy dependency on Zaptel
just for _timing_, and switched to POSIX timers instead) and not
Asterisk.

>  spca5xx or gspca anyone?

I read lkml and I've never heard of those. I assume therefore that they
_deserved_ to be mentioned in the same sentence as zaptel?

> > He even spoke of perhaps a timeout,  [...]
> 
> We talked about that before and people said "to dangerous, as people
> will yell at us when module foo suddenly vanishes in Fedora (x+2) again.

True. Which is why the 'almost upstream' criterion is useful. We've
rarely had to carry new drivers like that for more than one release,
have we?

-- 
dwmw2