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Gotta love "notwithstanding"Gotta love "notwithstanding"Posted Dec 7, 2012 20:21 UTC (Fri) by neilbrown (subscriber, #359)In reply to: Gotta love "notwithstanding" by lacos Parent article: A FALLOC_FL_NO_HIDE_STALE followup
I admit that it could look that way, but I think the reality is that Linus is being blatantly pragmatic.
The harm caused by the patch is not technical, and may even be purely theoretical, it is hard to measure. The benefit of the patch is that it makes it easier and safer for someone out there to use Linux, and that is a genuine positive.
The only real negative is that it seems that Ted slipped the patch in "under the radar", arguably misusing his status as a maintainer. They might hurt his reputation a little, but that isn't Linus' problem, and Ted has a very strong reputation so I don't think a little hurt will make a big dent.
You might argue that there is a risk that other maintainers might think that Ted got away with something and might try the same thing. I agree that is possible but I suspect it is fairly unlikely and I very much doubt they would get away with it.
But Linus' pragmatic approach is a lot more about solving problems that are, not solving problems that might be, and his decision is consistent with that approach.
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Our actions of today Posted Dec 7, 2012 23:24 UTC (Fri) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] The problem I see is that the next time that Nvidia or some other out-of-tree proprietary developer asks for some flag to be reserved for their own use, they can point to FALLOC_FL_NO_HIDE_STALE and say that they just want the same harmless favor: a teeny tiny flag to be reserved so that no one stomps over their nice proprietary code that solves their own situation and is of no use (or actively harmful) to anyone else, so that "it is easier and safer for someone out there to use Linux".Probably Linus will say "get lost" and it will not matter a bit, so perhaps there is really no problem.
Our actions of today Posted Dec 8, 2012 1:36 UTC (Sat) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
Google's patch is GPL-ed, but not mainlined. Linus is pragmatic and inconsistent whenever it suits him.
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