Mattias Schlenker wrote:
Am 23.03.2017 um 17:32 schrieb Ralf Friedl:
Busybox is often used in embedded devices, where kernels (and other
software) are not changed that often. Firmware may contain kernel
modules without full source, so a change to a newer kernel is not an
option. As an example, I have a router with kernel 2.6.13. I can't
update the kernel, but I can replace the busybox with a newer version
(and much more applets) than the original.
So it would be nice to have support for older kernels. I understand
that you may not want to have it enabled by default to keep the code
small, but in this case the code to support the older kernels seems
already present, so why not give the user an option to use it.
In my opinion it's completely legitimate to remove support for
kernels, C libraries or compilers that are older than seven or eight
years. It's not just about keeping (object) code small, but also about
keeping (source) code small. However how about maintaining a (semi
official) repository of some patches for special use cases like older
kernels, compilers or additional features like my nicer looking
fbsplash? The people over at xpra are doing so to be able to address
some common combinations of compilers and video encoder libraries to
escape the #ifdef of menuconfig hell.
I consider maintaining extra patches more work than maintaining the
older code in the same file.
BTW: You are sticking to an old Fritzbox 7270 since it "just works"?
So I suggest I'll be calling Doris Haar or some development staff over
at AVM for opening a bit more of the code than GPL requires?
Yes, this is about AVM. As AVM is not particularly eager to release GPL
sources and refused to release their modifications to OpenSSL just
because they didn't have to, I don't think it is likely that they will
release sources to all kernel modules. It is even possible that they
don't have the source for all modules, or don't have the rights to
release them. Besides, adapting kernel modules for newer kernels would
be more work, as the internal kernel interfaces change much more than
the interfeces to user space, which tend to be very stable.
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