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"We want more drivers, no matter how 'obscure' [...]""We want more drivers, no matter how 'obscure' [...]"Posted Apr 20, 2007 1:45 UTC (Fri) by sepreece (subscriber, #19270)In reply to: "We want more drivers, no matter how 'obscure' [...]" by GreyWizard Parent article: ELC: The embedded Linux nightmare
Gosh, you put a more negative spin on what I said than I intended. I enjoyed Thomas's talk (and the chat we had this afternoon) and agree with many of his points. I plan to take some of his suggestions back to work to see if I can sell them.
I'm not sure I consider "hubris and ignorance" a lot nicer to be called than evil; at least evil implies you're doing it on purpose and with awareness. I don't believe he suggested any such thing, just that we were missing an opportunity and could gain by working differently. We're not ignorant of the choice, we have just chosen differently. We don't think we know more than Thomas, except perhaps about the specifics of our business and our needs.
Being far from the current version is just a business choice, not a design failure. We build platforms that last five years or more with only tweaks in the components, rather than replacements. It's hard to argue that this should be done differently. Version shifts are typically done at the next major rev of the platform, but bugs are found over the whole life of the platform.
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"We want more drivers, no matter how 'obscure' [...]" Posted Apr 20, 2007 15:50 UTC (Fri) by GreyWizard (guest, #1026) [Link] I don't believe he suggested any such thing, just that we were missing an opportunity and could gain by working differently. He certainly phrased it more tactfully than I did, but people usually miss opportunities either because they don't know about them (ignorance) or because they think they know better and are mistaken (hubris). Being far from the current version is just a business choice, not a design failure. By this reasoning every design decision is actually a business choice and there is no such thing as a design mistake. We build platforms that last five years or more with only tweaks in the components, rather than replacements. It's hard to argue that this should be done differently. Perhaps that's why no one is arguing that. Gleixner seems to be arguing that the particular way vendors attempt to reach that goal is flawed, not that the goal itself is a problem. Version shifts are typically done at the next major rev of the platform, but bugs are found over the whole life of the platform. No device vendor needs to change 10,000 kernel files just to have bug fixes relevant to their devices when a complete operating system distribution for general purpose computers changes only 8,000. As Gleixner says, the reasons vendors give for use of special, closed, vendor kernels don't hold water.
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