> After all, Linus would never break userspace right? It was marked experimental. No promises were made. > It's not at all clear to me what really happened to

> After all, Linus would never break userspace right? It was marked experimental. No promises were made. > It's not at all clear to me what really happened to make all the drama. A PR was made that contained something that was more feature-like than bugfix-like, and that resulted in a whole module being ejected from the kernel? If you followed the whole saga, Kent had a history of being technically excellent but absolutely impossible to work with. He did not follow the kernel development process over and over again, instead choosing to post long rants and personal attacks to the mailing lists. Instead of accepting that he has to adapt, he always had (still has) the attitude that he knows best, everybody else are idiots and should just accept his better judgement. Of course the rules should apply… to anyone but him, because his work is special. Moreover, this was not a one PR thing. Linus actually had a long history of defending Kent, being patient, bending the rules, and generally putting up with him. This is unambiguously 100% Kent’s fault, which is very sad, because — as mentioned before — Kent’s work is technically excellent. He had a lot of good will that he squandered in spectacular fashion.