Re: Closed source modules will be banned from kernel?

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Rahul Sundaram wrote:
John Burton wrote:
Hmmm... do "Open Source" modules have the same problem? Do these "wholesale gratuitous changes" occur during minor revision changes or major version changes? Major version changes in most software change the API, while minor revisions do not. Are the kernel modules not consistent with this?

The kernel has a stable user space API and volatile in-kernel modules interfaces API. The reasons are outlined in

http://lxr.linux.no/linux/Documentation/stable_api_nonsense.txt

For free and open source code (including but not limited to driver modules) that is included within the upstream kernel, this presents no problems since whenever API changes occur, whoever is making the API change can go ahead and fix all the consumers of the API.

Linux kernel doesn't follow the traditional stable vs unstable tree development model in recent 2.6 kernel releases. Discussions on the reason for the change are outlined in many places including

http://lwn.net/Articles/94386/

Do you also happen to have a link for Red Hat's position on this problem or a description of how they deal with it in an enterprise product?

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   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx

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