Messages in this thread | | | From | Linus Torvalds <> | Date | Thu, 8 Mar 2012 15:40:26 -0800 | Subject | Re: [PATCH] sysfs: Optionally count subdirectories to support buggy applications |
| |
On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 2:18 PM, Eric W. Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com> wrote: > > Keeping compatibility is easy enough that it looks like it is worth > doing, but maintaining 30+ years of backwards compatibility
Stop right there.
This is *not* about some arbitrary "30-year backwards compatibility".
This is about your patch BREAKING EXISTING BINARIES.
So stop the f*&^ing around already. The patch was shown to be broken, stop making excuses, and stop blathering.
End of story. Binary compatibility is more important than *any* of your patches. If you continue to argue anything else or making excuses, I'm going to ask people to just ignore your patches entirely.
Seriously. Binary compatibility is *so* important that I do not want to have anything to do with kernel developers who don't understand that importance. If you continue to pooh-pooh the issue, you only show yourself to be unreliable. Don't do it.
Dammit, I'm continually surprised by the *idiots* out there that don't understand that binary compatibility is one of the absolute top priorities. The *only* reason for an OS kernel existing in the first place is to serve user-space. The kernel has no relevance on its own. Breaking existing binaries - and then not acknowledging how horribly bad that was - is just about the *worst* offense any kernel developer can do.
Because that shows that they don't understand what the whole *point* of the kernel was after all. We're not masturbating around with some research project. We never were. Even when Linux was young, the whole and only point was to make a *usable* system. It's why it's not some crazy drug-induced microkernel or other random crazy thing.
Really.
Linus
| |