Re: Attempted summary of "RT patch acceptance" thread

[Gerrit Huizenga <gh@us.ibm.com>]

On Mon, 13 Jun 2005 18:55:52 EDT, Karim Yaghmour wrote:
> 
> Bill Huey (hui) wrote:
> > I'm tell'n you that there is no way that this patch is going to
> > die. The commercial vendors and the general community is going
> > use this once they figure out what it can do and there will be
> > no stopping it. You can bet on some body extremity that this
> > will happen. It's inevitable and ultimately the future of Linux
> > whether they like it or not.
> 
> Please cool down. This is a rather extreme position.
> 
> The fact of the matter is that it is the community that is driving
> Linux, not the vendors. If the community decides something isn't
> going in, there isn't much any company can do about it, except
> maintain it outside of Linux for years on end, which economically
> speaking is just not feasible. That's why inclusion is so important.
 
Everyone scratches their own itches - and if a vendor doesn't *become*
a member of the community, including understanding the ground rules, the
motivators and de-motivators, and does not become an advocate for those
community goals, they will always be on the outside looking in.
Being a member of the community can cost you your vendor soul.  I really
like the phrasing that Andrew used in his keynote at OLS last year.
Reread this and think hard about it:

http://www.zip.com.au/~akpm/linux/patches/stuff/ols-2004.txt

In particular, I think this portion is key:

	Well, I think a similar process is coming into play as corporate
	programmers are assigned to sit in their cubicles and work on
	Linux.	They come in as good little corporate people but some
	of them are subverted.	We end up taking over their brains
	and owning them.  They become members "of the community".
	They become Free software developers.

While this is a statement of what is happening, I think it is also an
important statement about what needs to happen for the RT community to
become part of the mainline development community.  Until you have been
subverted, you are going to keep talking about how to advocate *your*
agenda.  You need to advocate the *communities'* agenda, as a member of
the subverted community who holds onto *all* of the major driving forces
and goals for Linux.

> Bare in mind that I wasn't even talking about whether or not
> PREEMPT_RT was making it in. I was only talking about the logistics
> of inclusion of any RT extension. Please people, get a grip, we're
> just trying to figure out the best way to do this stuff.

It's easy:

	1) Change your allegiance to Linux first
	2) Do the right thing.

And, implicit in that is that I believe that RT for the community will
in the long term be The Right Thing.

gerrit
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