Red Hat's "obfuscated" kernel source [LWN.net]

Red Hat's "obfuscated" kernel source

Posted Mar 1, 2011 22:10 UTC (Tue) by jrn (subscriber, #64214)
In reply to: Red Hat's "obfuscated" kernel source by jspaleta
Parent article: Red Hat's "obfuscated" kernel source

> No one pounds on Cisco/Linksys to make code available widely

Really?

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Red Hat's "obfuscated" kernel source

Posted Mar 1, 2011 22:16 UTC (Tue) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link] (2 responses)

No they get pounded to make it available to customers...at all. A bar Red Hat already meets. Many embedded vendors have trouble even meeting the strictest definition of GPL compliance of getting the source code in the hands of their customers...let alone into the hands of competitors or the general public or any nuance discussion about the "preferred" form.

-jef

Red Hat's "obfuscated" kernel source

Posted Mar 1, 2011 22:34 UTC (Tue) by jrn (subscriber, #64214) [Link] (1 responses)

Yes, I guess I should have phrased it another way: Red Hat has successfully raised expectations. People like them and are disappointed when they create obstacles because it is currently possible to collaborate with them.

I don't think that has too much to do with standardization. To give another example, many people _are_ upset that Google does not make their work on Android public as it happens but only makes code drops now and then. That is for many reasons, including wanting to be able to take advantage of hardware support from that tree and to increase its code quality.

Red Hat's "obfuscated" kernel source

Posted Mar 1, 2011 22:51 UTC (Tue) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

Sure be disappointed...express that honest disappointment. But be as fair an unbiased about expectations as you can. If this is going to hurt how people are already collaborating with Red Hat, then by all means those people should speak up and tell Red Hat that they valued that collaboration which the older kernel patch policy facilitated and try to engage them in a dialogue on how to structure things so that collaboration can continue to happen.

-jef