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The problem is: Good driver developers are not always good politicians/diplomats and vice versa. What this followup demands is that developers are suddenly supp

by wolfgke 10y ago

The problem is: Good driver developers are not always good politicians/diplomats and vice versa. What this followup demands is that developers are suddenly supposed to become politicians to get their implementation accepted. I mean: Lots of developers have a deep hate for "organizational politics" (IMHO rightfully so) - and this is suddenly something that should be accepted/loved when it is about Linux? I prefer to hold up the same standards to all kinds of organisations and don't make exceptions just because it is "for the good/open source/Linux".

tremon 10y ago
That's not how I read it. The driver developers are now acting as politicians, trying to merge their own AMD-specific worldview into an open structure and trying to convince the rest of the DRI world that that is a good thing. DA instead is saying to the developers that they need to play ball and work with the existing Linux DRI world and not silo themselves off.
- wolfgke 10y ago
  > That's not how I read it. The driver developers are now acting as politicians, trying to merge their own AMD-specific worldview into an open structure and trying to convince the rest of the DRI world that that is a good thing. If AMD decided to simply leave their driver as closed-source blob, they would not have this problem. But all the Linux fanboys that they want AMD to open source their graphics drivers. Just to state one thing clear: AMD already released specifications beforehand such that the kernel developers could have developed an independent graphics driver if they wanted. But it is better to shitstorm companies not to develop a driver than to sully one's hands. AMD was nice and did its job. But instead of being satisfied with the result they now want AMD to start playing the political game with them (for the protocol: IMHO the correct thing to do would be to bring the driver to the staging area and now it's part of the kernel developers to sully their hands to bring the part up to the standards they want). NVidia simply refuses to open source their drivers and does not get into this kind of trouble. Lesson learned: Never negotiate with terrorists.
  - AsyncAwait 10y ago
    > But all the Linux fanboys You already lost the argument, if you have to go with that, but I'll try my best to explain anyway; what the kernel developers want is for people to use the standard, already maintained interfaces, instead of companies developing their own and adding unnecessary complexity to the kernel, which would then need to be maintained by someone for a long time. AMD is basically writing an abstraction layer to allow them to use their Windows driver code, the Linux maintainers are saying; why should we have an "inferior" driver, that's basically "ported" from Windows? If you want to support Linux, write code that interacts with standard Linux interfaces, follows our conventions and benefits the community as a whole. > Lesson learned: Never negotiate with terrorists. So not wanting to merge shitty* code into your codebase is now terrorism?
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - wolfgke 10y ago
      > the Linux maintainers are saying; why should we have an "inferior" driver, that's basically "ported" from Windows? As I wrote: AMD already indulged a lot (first specifications, then even an open source Linux driver). Even after the first step the kernel developers would be able to write a Linux drivers(though it is a lot of work). I already clarified: AMD did all this to satisfy what the Linux fanboys wanted (while NVidia did nothing). But instead of saying "thanks for all the work you did, AMD. The driver is currently not up to the standards that we desire, but it still helped us to make the driver development a lot less work. We [kernel developers] will do the remaining job and lift the kernel up to the superior quality that we want.". But that is not what the kernel developers did. Instead they want AMD to dance to the kernel developer's piping.
      - htns 10y ago
        There is also that the quality of the old closed source fglrx driver was just ass. It would be naive to think all code coming from AMD has acceptable quality.
      - 10y ago
chriscappuccio 10y ago
This isn't "organizational politics". The minimum standard is not political. The Linux kernel is not always exemplary of high standards. When one is upheld, people like you who presumably benefit from a coherent system should be cheering, not attributing it to politics. You're obviously a moron since you think that everyone should act the same / hold the same personal interaction standard in all situations.
- wolfgke 10y ago
  > You're obviously a moron This is HN, not the LKML.

by wolfgke 10y ago

tremon 10y ago

That's not how I read it. The driver developers are now acting as politicians, trying to merge their own AMD-specific worldview into an open structure and trying to convince the rest of the DRI world that that is a good thing. DA instead is saying to the developers that they need to play ball and work with the existing Linux DRI world and not silo themselves off.

wolfgke 10y ago
> That's not how I read it. The driver developers are now acting as politicians, trying to merge their own AMD-specific worldview into an open structure and trying to convince the rest of the DRI world that that is a good thing. If AMD decided to simply leave their driver as closed-source blob, they would not have this problem. But all the Linux fanboys that they want AMD to open source their graphics drivers. Just to state one thing clear: AMD already released specifications beforehand such that the kernel developers could have developed an independent graphics driver if they wanted. But it is better to shitstorm companies not to develop a driver than to sully one's hands. AMD was nice and did its job. But instead of being satisfied with the result they now want AMD to start playing the political game with them (for the protocol: IMHO the correct thing to do would be to bring the driver to the staging area and now it's part of the kernel developers to sully their hands to bring the part up to the standards they want). NVidia simply refuses to open source their drivers and does not get into this kind of trouble. Lesson learned: Never negotiate with terrorists.
- AsyncAwait 10y ago
  > But all the Linux fanboys You already lost the argument, if you have to go with that, but I'll try my best to explain anyway; what the kernel developers want is for people to use the standard, already maintained interfaces, instead of companies developing their own and adding unnecessary complexity to the kernel, which would then need to be maintained by someone for a long time. AMD is basically writing an abstraction layer to allow them to use their Windows driver code, the Linux maintainers are saying; why should we have an "inferior" driver, that's basically "ported" from Windows? If you want to support Linux, write code that interacts with standard Linux interfaces, follows our conventions and benefits the community as a whole. > Lesson learned: Never negotiate with terrorists. So not wanting to merge shitty* code into your codebase is now terrorism?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - wolfgke 10y ago
    > the Linux maintainers are saying; why should we have an "inferior" driver, that's basically "ported" from Windows? As I wrote: AMD already indulged a lot (first specifications, then even an open source Linux driver). Even after the first step the kernel developers would be able to write a Linux drivers(though it is a lot of work). I already clarified: AMD did all this to satisfy what the Linux fanboys wanted (while NVidia did nothing). But instead of saying "thanks for all the work you did, AMD. The driver is currently not up to the standards that we desire, but it still helped us to make the driver development a lot less work. We [kernel developers] will do the remaining job and lift the kernel up to the superior quality that we want.". But that is not what the kernel developers did. Instead they want AMD to dance to the kernel developer's piping.
    - htns 10y ago
      There is also that the quality of the old closed source fglrx driver was just ass. It would be naive to think all code coming from AMD has acceptable quality.
    - 10y ago

chriscappuccio 10y ago

This isn't "organizational politics". The minimum standard is not political. The Linux kernel is not always exemplary of high standards. When one is upheld, people like you who presumably benefit from a coherent system should be cheering, not attributing it to politics. You're obviously a moron since you think that everyone should act the same / hold the same personal interaction standard in all situations.

wolfgke 10y ago
> You're obviously a moron This is HN, not the LKML.