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That would be an entirely separate issue related to licensing (which historically led to the creation of GNU and free software foundation BTW).

by tagrun 5y ago

trasz 5y ago
How is the lack of stable kernel API/ABI related to licensing?
- temac 5y ago
  There is an indirect relationship in that only out-of-tree kernel-space Linux drivers are inconvenienced by that, that lots of out-of-tree kernel-space Linux drivers are proprietary ones, and that most kernel-space Linux proprietary drivers are dubious on licensing grounds (to be clear, NVidia seems to be one of the most clean in that regard, but I'm not aware of tons of proprietary drivers as clean as they are). The thing is: it makes little sens for a kernel under GPLv2 to maintain an internal kernel space ABI for drivers (and I'm not even sure Linus would qualify with the licensing, but maybe I'm more moderate than he is). Ok I'm aware there is a mess at least on the Android side, but maybe the majority of it is questionable on licensing grounds to begin with (but the Linux Foundation is particularly lenient on licence compliance, btw, not surprising when you see the list of corporate members, and for some of the main ones their past practices - hm VMware hm...) And that being said, I would be curious to see tons of old Windows binary only kernel space drivers continuing to run on modern systems, or ironically even some user space drivers (IIRC, printer drivers are userspace but 32-bits ones do not work on 64-bits systems)... Ok there is more binary compat for a few major versions if you are lucky. But then MS can always randomly requires WDDM 2 for its next OS anyway. In the end, some old and/or exotic hardware work better (or at all) on recent Windows while some old and/or exotic hardware work better (or at all) under recent GNU/Linux distros, but I'm quite unsure this has anything to do with the precise kernel space API & ABI policies. What does not usually work is attempting to project a model on something that has vastly different premises. So yes, licensing can influence technical decisions. If your ecosystem is vastly built around binary only vendors, a more stable ABI is vastly more valuable than if you ecosystem is vastly built around source only free software vendors, AND pushing for in-tree integration on top of that...

That would be an entirely separate issue related to licensing (which historically led to the creation of GNU and free software foundation BTW).

by tagrun 5y ago

That would be an entirely separate issue related to licensing (which historically led to the creation of GNU and free software foundation BTW).

trasz 5y ago

How is the lack of stable kernel API/ABI related to licensing?

temac 5y ago
There is an indirect relationship in that only out-of-tree kernel-space Linux drivers are inconvenienced by that, that lots of out-of-tree kernel-space Linux drivers are proprietary ones, and that most kernel-space Linux proprietary drivers are dubious on licensing grounds (to be clear, NVidia seems to be one of the most clean in that regard, but I'm not aware of tons of proprietary drivers as clean as they are). The thing is: it makes little sens for a kernel under GPLv2 to maintain an internal kernel space ABI for drivers (and I'm not even sure Linus would qualify with the licensing, but maybe I'm more moderate than he is). Ok I'm aware there is a mess at least on the Android side, but maybe the majority of it is questionable on licensing grounds to begin with (but the Linux Foundation is particularly lenient on licence compliance, btw, not surprising when you see the list of corporate members, and for some of the main ones their past practices - hm VMware hm...) And that being said, I would be curious to see tons of old Windows binary only kernel space drivers continuing to run on modern systems, or ironically even some user space drivers (IIRC, printer drivers are userspace but 32-bits ones do not work on 64-bits systems)... Ok there is more binary compat for a few major versions if you are lucky. But then MS can always randomly requires WDDM 2 for its next OS anyway. In the end, some old and/or exotic hardware work better (or at all) on recent Windows while some old and/or exotic hardware work better (or at all) under recent GNU/Linux distros, but I'm quite unsure this has anything to do with the precise kernel space API & ABI policies. What does not usually work is attempting to project a model on something that has vastly different premises. So yes, licensing can influence technical decisions. If your ecosystem is vastly built around binary only vendors, a more stable ABI is vastly more valuable than if you ecosystem is vastly built around source only free software vendors, AND pushing for in-tree integration on top of that...