[Info-vax] RMS intro

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

On Thu, 04 Jan 2024 09:30:20 +0000, Single Stage to Orbit wrote:

> On Wed, 2024-01-03 at 19:01 +0000, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, 03 Jan 2024 08:54:23 +0000, Single Stage to Orbit wrote:
>>>
>>> That's true but it is a source of considerable pain for commercial
>>> products such as VMware, VirtualBox, ZFS and others. They all have to
>>> devote substantial engineering resources to release updates for every
>>> kernel release.
>> 
>> The usual recommendation is that they should contribute the necessary
>> drivers to the mainline Linux kernel--along with a commitment to keep
>> maintaining them.
>> 
>> Microsoft discovered this the hard way, when it got some Hyper-V
>> drivers accepted into the kernel, and then forgot about the part that
>> every piece of code in the kernel has to have a responsive maintainer.
>> It took the threat of the code being dropped from the kernel to make
>> them sit up and take notice.
> 
> It's the same old story, costs != profit and beancounters are not always
> right.

And yet you’d think those beancounters would notice the very opportunity 
to save money mentioned above, and stop having to “devote substantial 
engineering resources to release updates for every kernel release”.