Kernel prepatch 5.1-rc6

[Posted April 21, 2019 by corbet]

The 5.1-rc6 kernel prepatch is out for testing. "It's Easter Sunday here, but I don't let little things like random major religious holidays interrupt my kernel development workflow. The occasional scuba trip? Sure. But everybody sitting around eating traditional foods? No. You have to have priorities."

Kernel prepatch 5.1-rc6

Posted Apr 22, 2019 0:28 UTC (Mon) by donbarry (guest, #10485) [Link] (9 responses)

I hate to add this as initial post to an unrelated topic, but there seems no way to introduce this topic here. A letter to LWN has gone unanswered.

May I ask when LWN will lend its name and reputation to the defense of free software activist Ola Bini, arrested as part of the massive crackdown on journalism with the illegal rendition of Julian Assange?

Ola Bini is being held on 90 day "preventive detention" without charge in Ecuador. Free software groups in India and the EFF are defending him. The silence from other parts of the Free Software Community is most distressing. A letter written to the US FSF has gone unanswered.

Times like these are what define organizations and test whether they are adequate to the historical tasks placed on them. I have always deeply admired the activities of the free/libre software movement, which LWN is materially a part. I very much hope that it rises to this occasion and publicizes the plight and encourages the defense of Ola Bini and others who use and advocate for free software to sustain privacy, journalism, and democracy.

Ola Bini?

Posted Apr 22, 2019 1:08 UTC (Mon) by pr1268 (guest, #24648) [Link] (8 responses)

I get the impression that LWN's editors try really hard to keep this site apolitical.

While I don't have much to say about Ola Bini, and I get the impression that the evidence against him is circumstantial at best, I will say that Ecuador kicked Assange out of their embassy for being an obnoxious and ungrateful house guest.

Ola Bini?

Posted Apr 22, 2019 9:40 UTC (Mon) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link] (4 responses)

> I get the impression that LWN's editors try really hard to keep this site apolitical.

Apolitical news reporting is not merely unfeasible, but categorically impossible.

Ola Bini?

Posted Apr 22, 2019 11:16 UTC (Mon) by hubcapsc (subscriber, #98078) [Link] (1 responses)

lwn shines as a portal to this community's depth of knowledge about software. I'd consider political skreeds to be about as welcome as graffiti on a Church, there's a million other places to get that kind of hooey...

-Mike

Ola Bini?

Posted Apr 22, 2019 13:41 UTC (Mon) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link]

There is a continuum between "full of political screeds" and "apolitical".

"Apolitical" is an unachievable state for news reporting, because the choices "what shall I report?", "what details shall I include?", "what details shall I omit?", "what tone shall I use to report those details?", "how prominently shall I report it?", and "how shall I title my article about it?" are themselves political decisions.

Ola Bini?

Posted Apr 22, 2019 15:00 UTC (Mon) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (1 responses)

Politics come up whenever two or more people have to deal with each other on something; they are indeed unavoidable. Much of LWN's reporting on happenings within our community can be seen as political.

We do try to be focused, though, on which politics we cover. Stuff that isn't directly relevant to Linux and free software generally doesn't find a place here. Trust me, we have a lot of opinions that you may not want to be exposed to on LWN... The truly masochistic can check out my blog for sporadic postings on wider subjects.

With regard to Ola Bini, part of the problem is that we just don't know much about what is really going on there. Reading the EFF release certainly suggests that justice is not being done; perhaps we should have posted a pointer to it when it came out. I don't think we can add much to it at this time, but we will continue to pay attention to what is going on there.

Ola Bini?

Posted Apr 22, 2019 16:35 UTC (Mon) by willy (subscriber, #9762) [Link]

Re: your posting of three weeks ago on your blog,

That's not just a memory management test application. There's an embedded Scheme (guile) interpreter; audio integration; animations; and Wayland!

More importantly, it keeps me from reading email during discussions that don't fully engage me. So I'm at least listening.

Ola Bini?

Posted Apr 23, 2019 14:49 UTC (Tue) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link] (2 responses)

So Ecuador's government suddenly notices that Julian Assange is the worst house guest ever after just 7 years.
Completely coincidentally, Wikileaks promoted a document dump linking Ecuador's president to a corruption scandal a couple weeks before that.

Ola Bini?

Posted Apr 23, 2019 15:28 UTC (Tue) by spaetz (guest, #32870) [Link]

> So Ecuador's government suddenly notices that Julian Assange is the worst house guest ever after just 7 years.
> Completely coincidentally, Wikileaks promoted a document dump linking Ecuador's president to a corruption scandal a couple weeks before that.

I certainly do not condone corruption, but I would suggest that the former can well be connected to the latter. If my guest abused my trust and published e.g. nude pics if me, I would also kick her or him out.

Ola Bini?

Posted Apr 24, 2019 8:49 UTC (Wed) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]

So Ecuador's government suddenly notices that Julian Assange is the worst house guest ever after just 7 years.

It seems that Ecuador's government hasn't been entirely happy about Assange's personal habits and behaviour as a “guest” for some considerable time before they actually decided to kick him out.

Personally I would say that Assange probably wouldn't have lasted a week in my home, so as far as I'm concerned, putting up with him for seven years demonstrates quite exceptional tolerance.