3 ms·

The kernel community has never been particularly interested in the whole free vs open source software debate. The leadership is mostly pragmatic people. It’s j

The kernel community has never been particularly interested in the whole free vs open source software debate. The leadership is mostly pragmatic people. It’s just that Linux used GCC extensions and no one was interested in doing the work necessary to have it compile on a non-GCC compiler.

peoplefromibiza 4y ago
> The kernel community has never been particularly interested in the whole free vs open source software debate that's total BS are you telling me that Alan Cox had no involvement in the Free Software? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Cox_(computer_programmer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Cox_(computer_programmer) > It’s just that Linux used GCC extensions and no one was interested in doing the work necessary to have it compile on a non-GCC compiler. the GCC extensions were essential to enforce the GCC supremacy because no other non-free compiler could implement them
- WastingMyTime89 4y ago
  > are you telling me that Alan Cox had no involvement in the Free Software? I don’t see how your statement contradicts or is even linked to mine. The kernel community as a whole very much has little interest into the philosophical arguments surrounding open source. Apart from being convinced that sharing code is the best way to develop a kernel they have next to no active involvement in the whole charade. See for exemple keeping GPL v2, not opposing TIVOisation, disapproving on technical merits but allowing proprietary drivers and binary blobs. > the GCC extensions were essential to enforce the GCC supremacy because no other non-free compiler could implement them Linux uses GCC extensions because they are handy and GCC was the compiler everyone used to compile C projects for a long time. It’s not intentionally done to promote GCC on ideological ground, something pretty much no one cares about in the kernel community.
  - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
    > The kernel community as a whole very much has little interest into the philosophical arguments surrounding open source because they didn't have to. someone already established that it was the foundation, people like Linus Torvalds, Alan Cox, Maddog Hall and many (not too many, actually) others. The "community" for the longest time has been a bunch of people "is a small and well-defined group: Linus, Maddog Hall, Alan Cox, and somewhere between 6 and 12 others (varying at times)." (Steven Suson, 1999) "Watch the linux-kernel mailing list. The "Inner Circle" becomes very obvious. People go in and out of the Circle, so a list probably isn't possible [...] I would say it includes may be 2 dozen people." (Eric Princen, 1999) > It’s not intentionally done to promote GCC on ideological ground, something pretty much no one cares about in the kernel community. again: you're talking at the present, I am talking about the first two decades you may have forgotten about it, I did not.
    - WastingMyTime89 4y ago
      Torvalds was never a free software zealot in the way the FSS views the movement. He seems to believe open code leads to better code but I don’t think he is against the idea of closed source. He has worked on closed source software himself if I’m not mistaken.
      - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
        > Torvalds was never a free software zealot in the way the FSS views the movement Who said anything about zealots? please, stop putting words in someone else's mouth. Linus was a big supporter of free software and the fact that the Linux kernel was free software is what compelled many developers to donate their work for free They didn't do it to improve NT Kernel or Solaris kernel or... you know it. --- Software is like sex: it's better when it's free. -- Linus Torvalds
wang_li 4y ago
That's plainly not true as there are plenty of intra-kernel interfaces that are tagged as GPL only and if your kernel module isn't GPL you can't use said interfaces. For example, they added the GPL tag to the floating point context switch functions which broke ZFS at the time.
- WastingMyTime89 4y ago
  I don’t understand your comment. The kernel cares about its license which is indeed the GPL, yes. But Linux didn’t go out of its way to be incompatible with ZFS out of ideology. Sun intentionally picked a license which would not be compatible. That’s why ZFS lives outside of the main tree. The ideology that’s driving the Linux kernel development: “shared source code leads to better code, user land should never be broken” are very different from the one that led to GCC gimping itself. Generally speaking the kernel community is very technically oriented and doesn’t go out of its way to prevent things for social reasons.
  - wang_li 4y ago
    The kernel devs went out of their way to label a whole bunch of kernel functions as GPL only. It's not about mainlining third party kernel modules, it's about not letting non-GPLed modules use certain functions in the kernel. This includes the fully open source OpenZFS project. It's not about CDDL / GPL incompatibilities. For OpenZFS it was some FPU context switching functions that had to be worked around when the kernel team labelled those functions as GPL only. See: https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/issues/13042 https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/issues/13042
    - WastingMyTime89 4y ago
      You seem confused. There is no mysterious GPL only label in the kernel. The whole thing is licensed under the GPL v2 period. It’s just that some ABI were broken for an unrelated reason as Linux doesn’t guaranty ABI stability and OpenZFS can’t find an alternative which satisfy their dependency needs. The kernel team doesn’t care about out of tree code when making changes. It has always been the rule.

peoplefromibiza 4y ago

> The kernel community has never been particularly interested in the whole free vs open source software debate that's total BS are you telling me that Alan Cox had no involvement in the Free Software? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Cox_(computer_programmer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Cox_(computer_programmer) > It’s just that Linux used GCC extensions and no one was interested in doing the work necessary to have it compile on a non-GCC compiler. the GCC extensions were essential to enforce the GCC supremacy because no other non-free compiler could implement them

WastingMyTime89 4y ago
> are you telling me that Alan Cox had no involvement in the Free Software? I don’t see how your statement contradicts or is even linked to mine. The kernel community as a whole very much has little interest into the philosophical arguments surrounding open source. Apart from being convinced that sharing code is the best way to develop a kernel they have next to no active involvement in the whole charade. See for exemple keeping GPL v2, not opposing TIVOisation, disapproving on technical merits but allowing proprietary drivers and binary blobs. > the GCC extensions were essential to enforce the GCC supremacy because no other non-free compiler could implement them Linux uses GCC extensions because they are handy and GCC was the compiler everyone used to compile C projects for a long time. It’s not intentionally done to promote GCC on ideological ground, something pretty much no one cares about in the kernel community.
- peoplefromibiza 4y ago
  > The kernel community as a whole very much has little interest into the philosophical arguments surrounding open source because they didn't have to. someone already established that it was the foundation, people like Linus Torvalds, Alan Cox, Maddog Hall and many (not too many, actually) others. The "community" for the longest time has been a bunch of people "is a small and well-defined group: Linus, Maddog Hall, Alan Cox, and somewhere between 6 and 12 others (varying at times)." (Steven Suson, 1999) "Watch the linux-kernel mailing list. The "Inner Circle" becomes very obvious. People go in and out of the Circle, so a list probably isn't possible [...] I would say it includes may be 2 dozen people." (Eric Princen, 1999) > It’s not intentionally done to promote GCC on ideological ground, something pretty much no one cares about in the kernel community. again: you're talking at the present, I am talking about the first two decades you may have forgotten about it, I did not.
  - WastingMyTime89 4y ago
    Torvalds was never a free software zealot in the way the FSS views the movement. He seems to believe open code leads to better code but I don’t think he is against the idea of closed source. He has worked on closed source software himself if I’m not mistaken.
    - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
      > Torvalds was never a free software zealot in the way the FSS views the movement Who said anything about zealots? please, stop putting words in someone else's mouth. Linus was a big supporter of free software and the fact that the Linux kernel was free software is what compelled many developers to donate their work for free They didn't do it to improve NT Kernel or Solaris kernel or... you know it. --- Software is like sex: it's better when it's free. -- Linus Torvalds

wang_li 4y ago

That's plainly not true as there are plenty of intra-kernel interfaces that are tagged as GPL only and if your kernel module isn't GPL you can't use said interfaces. For example, they added the GPL tag to the floating point context switch functions which broke ZFS at the time.

WastingMyTime89 4y ago
I don’t understand your comment. The kernel cares about its license which is indeed the GPL, yes. But Linux didn’t go out of its way to be incompatible with ZFS out of ideology. Sun intentionally picked a license which would not be compatible. That’s why ZFS lives outside of the main tree. The ideology that’s driving the Linux kernel development: “shared source code leads to better code, user land should never be broken” are very different from the one that led to GCC gimping itself. Generally speaking the kernel community is very technically oriented and doesn’t go out of its way to prevent things for social reasons.
- wang_li 4y ago
  The kernel devs went out of their way to label a whole bunch of kernel functions as GPL only. It's not about mainlining third party kernel modules, it's about not letting non-GPLed modules use certain functions in the kernel. This includes the fully open source OpenZFS project. It's not about CDDL / GPL incompatibilities. For OpenZFS it was some FPU context switching functions that had to be worked around when the kernel team labelled those functions as GPL only. See: https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/issues/13042 https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/issues/13042
  - WastingMyTime89 4y ago
    You seem confused. There is no mysterious GPL only label in the kernel. The whole thing is licensed under the GPL v2 period. It’s just that some ABI were broken for an unrelated reason as Linux doesn’t guaranty ABI stability and OpenZFS can’t find an alternative which satisfy their dependency needs. The kernel team doesn’t care about out of tree code when making changes. It has always been the rule.