Messages in this thread | | | From | (david parsons) | Subject | Re: [Call For Wartectomy] CRLF conversion out of kernel | Date | 14 Jul 1999 14:50:52 -0700 |
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In article <linux.kernel.19990714223326.L2120@loth.demon.co.uk>, Steve Dodd <dirk@loth.demon.co.uk> wrote: >On Wed, Jul 14, 1999 at 11:48:40AM -0700, david parsons wrote: > >> Sure, you can do things the MS-Windows way and arbitrarily break >> compatability from one version of Linux to the next (certainly this >> would be nothing new -- software engineering died of a buzzword >> overdose early in the 1990s -- but it would be nice to be able to >> recommend Linux in terms more glowing than "well, it's Unix, I >> guess.") > >So we gradually let the project die under the weight of years of accumulated >cruft instead?
Get back to me in a decade and ask the same question.
Broken behavior in one filesystem is not the "weight of years of accumulated cruft".
>It's good to clear out (some of the) cruft in a major revision; if you >don't like it then may I kindly point you at 2.2.10, or 2.0.37, or 1.2.13.
Hey, if I could take 2.2.x device drivers and plug them into 1.2.13, I'd do that and get 220k back on my install floppies. But, oddly enough, there have been 4 releases of the kernel since then with 4 different device driver interfaces (and nothing but paranoia and contempt for any attempts to publish a driver interface), so nothing will work without massive hackery.
But why the devil should I reward sloppy coding practices by taking all my toys and playing with a different crowd? Even if Linux wasn't Unix's only hope, there are massive benefits to making it easy to upgrade to new kernels.
____ david parsons \bi/ Sheesh. \/
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