Heh, small, yet important difference...

Posted Oct 23, 2011 0:01 UTC (Sun) by robert_s (subscriber, #42402)
In reply to: Heh, small, yet important difference... by khim
Parent article: Andy Rubin: Android 4.0 to be open sourced by year end (The H)

"But when you need something "state of the art" in Linux it's usually created in cathedral fashion! New features are not designed piecemeal on the LKML. They are designed by one person (or few persons) in isolation and presented to the wide kernel community when more-or-less complete. Final polishing and debugging... that happens in bazaar fashion. New development? Almost never."

I would argue that the development of btrfs shows exactly this. Sure, the bulk of it is written by an oracle employee, but it's largely developed out in the open.

Another example might be the continual transformation of Linux (a "general purpose" operating system) into a more and more RT-capable operating system, which, as far I know, is the first time this has ever been done. The general wisdom even states that RT capabilities and general purpose operating systems just don't mix. Again, development is largely done in the open.

"So no, linux kernel is not an exception to the rule."

I'm not saying it's an exception to the rule, I'm saying the rule is bollocks.

What is there which can be named "state of the art"?

Posted Oct 23, 2011 14:46 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

I would argue that the development of btrfs shows exactly this.

Note even close.

Sure, the bulk of it is written by an oracle employee, but it's largely developed out in the open.

The problem lies not even with fact that's it's developed by oracle employee. The problem lies with the fact that it's not yet even released! Initially it was planned for eoy 2008 release (and even then it offered little over state-of-the-art reiser4 or state-of-the-art ZFS), but now the development of initial version stretches till 2012 and that's if we'll be lucky. By then we'll be have good, quite solid filesystem - but it'll be of "me too" variety, not even close to "state-of-the-art". Typical result of bazaar development.

The general wisdom even states that RT capabilities and general purpose operating systems just don't mix.

The general wisdom says that general purpose OS with RT capabilities is called QNX Neutrino and was released over 10 years ago. So, again: good development of "me too" variety.

Again, development is largely done in the open.

Right - and that's why it so slow. Of course the problem lies not in the fact it's done in the open. The problem lies in the fact that it passes numerous reviews. The end result is probably better code... but it's delivered years after it's "state-of-the-art" expiry date.

I'm not saying it's an exception to the rule, I'm saying the rule is bollocks.

Just because you don't like rule does not mean it's crazy or stupid. Even your own examples show that it works. Sure, "development in the open" often delivers better result. But it arrives much, MUCH, MUCH later when it's not longer "state-of-the-art" - if it arrives at all. Android had no time (still does not have it, actually: take a look on tablet market) to play bazaar games because there were a lot of alternatives, most of them proprietary (IOS, WebOS, WP7, etc). The only open-source alternatives were Symbian and MeeGo and it's obvious that Symbian just was not good enough and MeeGO was hopelessly late - mostly because it tried to play bazaar: first competitive version is released just recently with N9 and even that is not "real release".