Red Hat's "obfuscated" kernel source

Having turned many megabytes of patches to XFree86 from one huge monolith into something resembling changeset patches years ago, and having a pretty damn good idea of what that cost in terms of person-hours, I'm comfortable with my interpretation.

The purpose of GNU GPL is, in part, to keep end users from having to jump through ridiculous or high-cost hoops to make a work of software operate as they desire.

If the Red Hat kernel engineers don't work with a giant monolithic patch, then they are imposing a tax on the rest of the community by forcing everyone else to swallow one.

If I were a copyright holder in the kernel, I'd be talking to the SFLC right about now.

Maybe no copyright holders in the kernel share my interpretation. That's fine; it's their prerogative. My view is that Red Hat is doing the Wrong Thing(tm) here, and if the GNU GPL is a sufficiently long lever to get them to revert their decision, good. If it's not, the perhaps the weight of public opinion will be.

They've clearly made a choice that no sane and educated person can regard as friendly to the community. Part of the solution is to shine light and attention on this hostile decision until they find a better way to solve whatever problem it is they're trying to solve.

Telling the world what that problem is, exactly, would be a great first step.