Reiser4 and kernel inclusion

Posted Sep 22, 2005 22:25 UTC (Thu) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link]

I've expressed my opinion elsewhere in this thread. Here I am just stating a fact. Namesys has an interest in seeing that Reiser4 is the only filesystem with the additional features. Namesys also has a business interest in being the sole entity up to the task of supporting and extending Reiser4. Remember, they make their money from supporting and extending their code privately via paid contract. And while there is nothing wrong with that, one must keep in mind that Namesys' interests do not necessarily coincide with that of the rest of the community.

That is the reason Namesys is so resistant to the fixes that the other kernel developers have proposed. Hans' bad attitude is just a secondary effect and has diverted attention from the real issues.

Bottom line: I am not familiar enough with Christoph Hellwig's reputation to comment. However, I do trust Andrew Morton and Alan Cox to remain level headed and act in the best long term interests of the project. I trust them not to get carried away by Namesys' extensive hype. Likewise, I trust them not to speak against the merging of a patch simply out of spite.

BTW, if people want to use reiser4 without having to mess with the external patch, I'm pretty sure that the latest SUSE versions include it. Which is the way it should be. The vendors are free to add whatever feature patches they want; their trees are short-term. The vanilla kernel is all about long-term maintainability. Linux's future depends on it.