The value of drive-through contributions

I have been partly responsible for two separate drive-through contributions to the linux kernel: both where critical bug fixes done in connection with my day job. An explanation of the bug was included in both cases. The actual fix was different in detail, but not in principle, from my original one in both instances.

My day job did permit any serious kernel development except for critical bug fixes, so doing more was unfortunately not possible. I like to think that some other people benefited from not experiencing the bugs :-) Both bugs only affected heavy server hardware which is too expensive for a personal box.

The ability to get the bug squashed and move on was valuable, and one of the nice things about open source was we could produce an interim fix, and upstream squashed be bug quickly.