The TAB report on the UMN affair [LWN.net]

The TAB report on the UMN affair

Posted May 5, 2021 21:57 UTC (Wed) by plugwash (subscriber, #29694)
In reply to: The TAB report on the UMN affair by dvrabel
Parent article: The TAB report on the UMN affair

Trying to understand the power balance here.

Is my understanding that Linus retains ultimate authority over what code does or does not go into Linux correct?

If-so Do we know anything about Linus's position on this issue?

Has Linus said anything on the umn issue? Has linus accepted or rejected Greg's revert patches in his tree (which I understand is considered the master Linux tree)?

to post comments

The TAB report on the UMN affair

Posted May 6, 2021 19:53 UTC (Thu) by ssmith32 (subscriber, #72404) [Link]

No. Greg K-H maintains the stable branch.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Kroah-Hartman

Most people get their kernels from distros who can follow stable or Linus' branch, and often will carry their own patches, and perhaps some other mish-mashed combination of a bunch of things.

So I would tell you just to Google: but that would have prevented me from noticing that Mr. K-H's pic on Wikipedia is him sitting.... in Nuremberg.. coincidence is a funny funny thing.

The TAB report on the UMN affair

Posted May 7, 2021 2:56 UTC (Fri) by tytso (✭ supporter ✭, #9993) [Link]

Greg's revert patches are going through the normal review process. They were reviewed by developers and when the original UMN commit was found to be valid, he dropped the corresponding revert patch. In cases where the UMN commits were found wanting, the revert commit was kept, and when appropriate, a fix-up patch was added that _correctly_ fixed the problem was added.

When the review process is completed, they will be submitted to Linus, and given the huge amount of work and review done by a large number of kernel developers, I would expect that Linus will take the patches, since they will be a strict improvement to the Linux kernel.

Tom's Hardware reported the following after they had interviewed Linus:

Saying the University of Minnesota's ban from contributing to the Linux kernel has been a popular topic of conversation among the open source community would be an understatement. Now, Linux creator Linus Torvalds has weighed in on the issue, and his response was milder than one might expect.
Whatever he did seems to have worked. Torvalds reportedly told iTWire that "I don't really know what to say" about the University of Minnesota ban. "I think the email thread is likely the most relevant information. [...] I don't think it has been a huge deal _technically_, but people are pissed off, and it's obviously a breach of trust."