A Stable Linux Kernel API/ABI? "The Most Insane Proposal" For Linux Development

[birdie]

I decided to be nasty: https://lkml.org/lkml/2016/4/7/124

Read and enjoy.

[SystemCrasher]

'cept Microsoft is still the dominating force.

Let 'em dominate people like you, securing your poor fate. Other people could just refuse to be dominated. All it takes is a wish. Should I refuse to be dominated by MS, there is very little they can do about it. Isn't it funny? If I do not use their tools and do not rely on their poisonous ecosystem, they can't make my life much worse either. Take that.

They can afford mistakes and treating customers badly. GNU/Linux desktop distros with their half a dozen users can't.

This is really perverted, proprietary point of view. Actually, people have joined their efforts to do jobs they need to get done. Customers aren't inherent part of this plan on it's own, though some people could be acting on behalf of their customers, solving tasks these customers may need. They could get paid for it, etc. Yet, I can afford to show you or microsoft my middle finger, and I would not lose even single cent on it. I can even afford showing middle finger to some few customers I strongly dislike. Though if one would just swing his middle finger all the time, it is quite possible to run out of money and get poor reputation. So one have to think twice before swinging middle finger. But sometimes it just way too tempting to show middle finger to some unpleasant wrench.

And yes. Steve Ballmer did ruin Microsoft, to an extent. The company has only been really flourishing again since Nadela took office.

Flourishing? This should be some perverted sense of humour. What exactly has changed since Ballmer? MS has dumped their failed trash code? Cool, but it's not like if it seeng major development. That's what you get for proprietary ecosystem. Microsoft "wannabe-opensource" efforts are hardly going to take off and everyone who would chew on this shit would get their time wasted. Yet it is major feature, not bug. Tarpits are nice. Especially for MS-inclined devs, lol.

[SystemCrasher]

Stable API would halt kernel development (sorry, but Windows suxx, selling the very same kernel for 10 years) and vendors would try to feed us with fuckin' binary blobs. Hopefully mr Torvalds is smartass enough to get idea and swing his middle finger to blobbed companies. Who needs windows #2, dammit? There is already one.

[F1esDgSdUTYpm0iy]

They can afford mistakes and treating customers badly.

You did honestly not just say that, did you? Come on, tell me you're joking.

And yes. Steve Ballmer did ruin Microsoft, to an extent. The company has only been really flourishing again since Nadela took office.

Actually, if you researched the subject, you would find that most of Microsoft's current course was set in motion long before Nadela. Which is not to say Nadela isn't doing a fine job, he is. But, as balls out crazy as Ballmer may have been, he actually did do some good for Microsoft. Sure enough, also a lot of bad but, the company surely did not only suffer. I'm no fan of Ballmer, not by any stretch of the imagination but the situation concerning Ballmer's leadership is a bit more complex than popular media would have people believe.

In fact, I would say Gates has been the worst CEO so far. Because it was under his leadership that Microsoft became an almost complete monopolist in the 90s and then stopped innovating. Almost killing Windows in the process. Had Win ME been succeeded by yet another 9x, ME-generation OS, I'm not sure it would've done quite as well as Windows XP did.

[unixfan2001]

It's working for Microsoft, isn't it? Releasing and continuing to maintain an OS whose core API just leaves it vulnerable, erratic decision making as far as the UI is concerned, ever increasing monitoring and data collection and, let's not forget, the intermittently forced Windows 10 update. Began forced then was made optional and now it's recommended, so almost forced again.

Point being -- treating your users like shit (or to be more on point, like cattle) is working fine for Microsoft! And, as far as attitude is concerned, Steve Ballmer was far worse than Linus Torvalds ever has been. And far more disturbed. Did he ruin Microsoft or Windows with that attitude of his? Nope.

TL;DR -- Linux not exactly having a dominating position in the desktop segment has, to be extremely precise, absolutely nothing to do with the personal attitude of the people in the Linux community. Absolutely nothing.

'cept Microsoft is still the dominating force.
They can afford mistakes and treating customers badly. GNU/Linux desktop distros with their half a dozen users can't.

And yes. Steve Ballmer did ruin Microsoft, to an extent. The company has only been really flourishing again since Nadela took office.

[duby229]

I mean closed source binaries, not open source ones where they gonna always recompile anyway. Either your program is important enough that most distros ship it in easy way and make sure it's compatible, or you will suffer.

Doesn't that imply that a closed source project is the wrong way to adapt to linux? You're right, but I don't think you understand the reason that you're right.

[abu_shawarib]

That's a joke... Considering there must be at least 100 distributions that do it every single day, it isn't very funny either.

I mean closed source binaries, not open source ones where they gonna always recompile anyway. Either your program is important enough that most distros ship it in easy way and make sure it's compatible, or you will suffer.

[F1esDgSdUTYpm0iy]

duby229Do you honestly believe you'll ever be able to surpass 2% with an attitude like that?

It's working for Microsoft, isn't it? Releasing and continuing to maintain an OS whose core API just leaves it vulnerable, erratic decision making as far as the UI is concerned, ever increasing monitoring and data collection and, let's not forget, the intermittently forced Windows 10 update. Began forced then was made optional and now it's recommended, so almost forced again.

Point being -- treating your users like shit (or to be more on point, like cattle) is working fine for Microsoft! And, as far as attitude is concerned, Steve Ballmer was far worse than Linus Torvalds ever has been. And far more disturbed. Did he ruin Microsoft or Windows with that attitude of his? Nope.

TL;DR -- Linux not exactly having a dominating position in the desktop segment has, to be extremely precise, absolutely nothing to do with the personal attitude of the people in the Linux community. Absolutely nothing.

[duby229]

And most of them use a traditional packaging system with a graphical or textual UI.
The moment one piece of software a user requires isn't available, 90% of your users will switch back to Windows or Mac OS X.

Doesn't matter how straight forward you think adding 3rd party sources is.

Get your sources upstream then. If you don't want to participate in community efforts then you can work all by yourself all for yourself.

[duby229]

duby229

So how is blaming the customer working out for desktop GNU/Linux, so far? Do you honestly believe you'll ever be able to surpass 2% with an attitude like that?
I don't think the average customer very much likes being screamed at or being called all names in the book.

If it's gonna happen, it'll happen regardless of you or I. If you haven't noticed Linux is everywhere, not just desktop. Everybody that uses a computer can thank linux for almost everything they take for granted. Checked your email lately? Browsed the web perhaps? Made a telephone call? Watched TV?

You don't like the way things work, but the fact is things work the way they do because of decades of trial and error. And it's because of that vast amount of experience that linux today is absolutely indispensable as it is.