Don't need kernel source, but do need instructions and config files

[alan]

On Fri, 15 Oct 2004, Keith Lofstrom wrote:

> The 45MB+ consumed by the Kernel sources on the CD may indeed be less
> important than Yet Another Text Editor to the distro commissars.  It's
> their party, they get to choose. 
> 
> But it would be really handy if, somewhere on the install disks, there
> were tools and instructions and configs to rebuild the distributed
> kernels, exactly like the binaries and libraries on the FC3 distro,
> so the great unwashed masses can check to see that the binaries as
> distributed are clean and uncorrupted.  
> 
> A person would have to be insane to run a kernel that they couldn't
> verify corresponded exactly to clean sources.  Such insane people are
> called "Windows users", and we are here because we are NOT Windows users.
> 
> Recompiling a kernel, even with a stock config file, is like getting
> your own apartment rather than living in your parent's basement. 
> Not everyone needs to do it, but it is not that hard, and it is
> an important step in the growth of an open source software user.
> It is empowering, and it should be made easy.
> 
> So leave the kernel sources on the source disks, or on a mirror, but
> please provide a cookbook so that newbies can experience them.

The other reason to have the source is that there are some of us who have 
to compile third party kernel modules that demand bits of the kernel 
source.  (Yeah it should not need it, but some do and it is a pain having 
to download a seperate copy of the source and build it just so I can have 
a working wireless card.)

BTW, when is "beehive" going to get GPLed?  (Or at least not required to 
build a kernel-source module without hackery?)