Closed source modules will be banned from kernel?
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell at gmail.com
Tue Jul 8 15:14:36 UTC 2008
Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> John Burton wrote:
>> Hmmm... do "Open Source" modules have the same problem? Do these
>> "wholesale gratuitous changes" occur during minor revision changes or
>> major version changes? Major version changes in most software change
>> the API, while minor revisions do not. Are the kernel modules not
>> consistent with this?
>
> The kernel has a stable user space API and volatile in-kernel modules
> interfaces API. The reasons are outlined in
>
> http://lxr.linux.no/linux/Documentation/stable_api_nonsense.txt
>
> For free and open source code (including but not limited to driver
> modules) that is included within the upstream kernel, this presents no
> problems since whenever API changes occur, whoever is making the API
> change can go ahead and fix all the consumers of the API.
>
> Linux kernel doesn't follow the traditional stable vs unstable tree
> development model in recent 2.6 kernel releases. Discussions on the
> reason for the change are outlined in many places including
>
> http://lwn.net/Articles/94386/
Do you also happen to have a link for Red Hat's position on this problem
or a description of how they deal with it in an enterprise product?
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell at gmail.com
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