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Election 2006 (and beyond): Digital Copyright Canada
From: pjlahaie_-at-_atlsci.com (Paul J.Y. Lahaie)
Date: 6 Apr 1999 13:57:50 -0400
References: <3707A3FB.60674F8E@vsnl.com>
Russell McOrmond wrote:
> What the average consumer buys and uses is RedHat, Caldera, SuSE, etc.
> They for the most part don't care who the maintainers of various thread of
> various packages are, or which particular project the Distribution
> creators decided to use. If Dave Miller went off and made incompatible
> changes to the kernel component that affected RedHat's ability to market
> their product, then those features would be ignored by RedHat.
And if SuSE, Caldera and Red Hat all use incompatible versions of
the Linux kernel, Applix which compiles ApplixWare for Red Hat leaves
out all the SuSE and Caldera users.
> Yes, the project would not have gotten where it is today without
> leadership skills, but I do not at all believe that we are so fragile that
> if these leaders were lost that the projects them-self would disappear.
The leadership skills are what made Linux the kernel it is. Without
them, we'd probably be in the same boat the *BSD people are in. A ton
of duplicated effort because some people don't get along with the
steering commitee.
> Having Linus leave would not even affect the code base to the same level
> as having competing GNOME and KDE projects does, and I for one still
> believe that having both these projects is going to be beneficial to the
> future of Free Software based desktops.
Having Linus leaving would probably mean putting Alan Cox in
charge. Luckily, he is also a good leader (basically handling alot of
the leadership role as it is).
> And so what if the kernel for Linux died some time in the future after
> Free Software is established? I for one plan to jump ship to HURD once it
> gets to the stability that I currently enjoy with Linux. As more software
> moves to the Free Software model, "Binary compatibility" will not be an
> issue and with it most of the compatibility issues you speak of would not
> be an issue.
Just because it compiles on Linux does not mean it compiles on Hurd,
etc.. It just means we move more work from "emulators" to "build
environments". Not to mention that Hurd isn't exactly a purely POSIX
environment, therefore some tweaking of applications will most likely be
needed for a decent port.
My point was that losing Linus, etc.. would be a great blow to the
Linux project. One that could possibly splinter Linux development and
really hurt it's acceptance in the marketplace. I believe that's what
the earlier poster meant by "splitting up".
- Paul
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