Comment by MichaelCollins

3 years ago

Linus does provide a stable ABI with Linux, it's GNU who drops the ball and doesn't. You're criticizing Linus for something he has nothing to do with. What's the point in that?

5 comments

MichaelCollins

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knorker  3 years ago

Linus limited his scope to something that doesn't matter for users.

I think this is a valid criticism.

It's admirable to do the dishes, but the house is also on fire, so nobody will be able to enjoy the clean plates, so what's then even the point of doing the dishes?

In fact, in this analogy he could have saved the kitten instead of done the dishes.

Err, back from analogy land: ABI stability makes it harder to make things better, improving and replacing APIs. This is expected. But here we are in the worst of both worlds. Thanks to the kernel we are slowed down in improvements, and thanks to kinda-userspace (i.e. vdso & ld-linux), and userspace infra (libc, libstdc++, libm) we don't have ABI compatability either.

So it's lose-lose.

phendrenad2  3 years ago

Linus chose to only care about the kernel. So there's possibly some fault there.

  • sph  3 years ago

    So it's Linus' fault he didn't just write the kernel but should also decided to being responsible for the entire userspace as well? What kind of argument is that.

    • phendrenad2  3 years ago

      By that logic nothing is anyone's fault. "I did exactly what I meant to do, nothing more, nothing less. Therefore you cannot say anything negative about it. Have a nice day." I feel like there's a Peanuts comic like this: "No matter what happens any place or any time in the world, this absolves me from all blame!"