So layering is no longer a thing?

Posted Dec 22, 2022 6:06 UTC (Thu) by mrugiero (guest, #153040)
In reply to: So layering is no longer a thing? by glaubitz
Parent article: Woodruff: Weird architectures weren't supported to begin with

> Imagine a hypothetical situation where the LLVM developers change their code in such a way that it can no longer be used for Rust for code generation. Would you also accept the answer "Well, then go and maintain an old fork of LLVM yourself!"?
>
> Or a big company like Google becomes in charge of the Linux kernel development and make such drastic changes to the codebase that the kernel will only run on ARM and POWER devices. Would you also accept the answer "Well, then go and maintain an old fork of the kernel yourself if you need it for x86_64!"?

You may not like it, but that's 100% how any kind of community effort works. Either you do the work, or you don't. If Google becomes in charge of mainline Linux kernel development and does whatever, either a community of devs decides to fork, or they don't and it becomes Google's shop. Under no circumstances Google decides it's time to think of the poor little users. If you expect that, you'll live floating from disappointment to disappointment.
So, yes, that's an answer I would accept, because just as I value my time and expect you to respect it I owe other people respect for theirs.

> My point is: Linux distributions are made possible because traditionally because stable APIs made it possible for everyone to assemble their system of choice on their platform of choice. Be it Debian with a FreeBSD kernel or an open source fork of Solaris on x86_64. Everyone has been able to use what they prefer in the configuration they wanted with the individual components such as GNOME, Emacs, GCC, libpng etc being highly portable thanks to using stable APIs.

More than anything else, distributions are made possible by people doing the work, not by the spectators booing from the grades.

> Now all of a sudden, the Rust community comes around, takes core projects and rewrites them in Rust causing a conflict with users which use exotic setups. And instead of trying to intermediate according to their "openeness and inclusivity" principles, they just alienate these users and tell them to stop using their custom setups and just use something more mainstrean.

Now all of a sudden, the exotic setup users tell the developers to stop using their tool of choice that makes their lives easier to stick to that stuff they need to keep their exotic setup working, and do it for free while they're at it.
So, why do we expect these devs to keep supporting these users' software when they're not willing to do the same. The first sign of laziness is feeling insulted when someone suggests you should pull up your sleeves and do the things that are on your own interest (and possibly only yours).
Pragmatically there's only three ways to solve this disagreement:
- Fork the original code;
- Implement support for your fringe platform in LLVM;
- Use the old version.
Note how none of them is "make the other person do it for me"?

> The Rust community is hampering their own success as there are projects that would like to use Rust code, but they are currently holding off these plans due to the fears of reduced portability.

Such as?