More DTrace envy

I find most of the comments to this article 'interesting' in that they debate the licensing
issues and who owns what.

Nearly everyone is missing the point. Whilst you all debate the merits of a license, nothing
much happens.

Dtrace is needed by real people in real production environments. Environments designed for
dtrace - production critical, and by people who dont know the kernel.

There are lots of issues with dtrace - which relate to competence of a user in a scenario
where they need or could use dtrace.

Does dtrace have to be in the kernel? Absolutely not. I dont know why people are hung up on
that issue. We dont put mplayer or firefox in the kernel, and dtrace doesnt need to be either.

By *not putting this in the kernel simply increases the work for the dtrace maintainer
(presently, me)* to handle the Linux development model.

When I buy an off the shelf product - I expect it to work, irrespective of my platform or
version of OS. Dtrace should be like that. That is the issue - can it be platform independent
to an end user. (The code may end up with horrid #ifdefs but the end user wont/shouldnt care).

The more i get into dtrace the more I am convinced of the above. I have not had to modify a
Linux kernel to make it work and have no intention in the future - the difficult bit (proving
it can be done) is over.

The next phase is looking at the end-user experience and looking for compatibility and
least-surprise.

paul fox