On Fri, 18 Jan 2002, Shlomi Fish wrote about the need for a Great Kernel
CVS Mutiny and since then things never were the same...:
[... details were snipped ...]
This is a classical problem of wanting to eat a cake and have it, too.
We all want Linus to continue to lead the kernel development effort. But
we want Linus to give professional attention to those patches, which he
receives, and which deserve it.
We also want to have heretic kernels - kernels, which got patches, which
Linus didn't approve of or didn't even review. Simple forks won't do,
because if a forked kernel diverges too far, then it'll be impossible to
patch it with Linus-approved patches and vice versa. This is like the
sterility of descendants of interbreeding, if their parents are too
genetically different from each other.
It would also be nice to be able to mix and match different patches to
create kernels. For example, when there were two (or three?) different VM
implementations floating around, it would have been nice to make them
interchangeable (in the source code level) - selectable by means of a
kernel compile-time configuration parameter.
A solution, which will address the above concerns, will allow the Linux
kernel to become a testbed for new OS innovations. If someone wants to
try a novel filesystem, he can try to implement it on top of a reorganized
Linux kernel. If someone else (probably Shlomi, who seems to be endless
fountainhead of ideas) comes forth with a novel process scheduling
algorithm, he can try it under realistic loads by plugging it into Linux
kernel.
This way, hacking Linux kernel will again become the fun it was in the
days when the kernel was small and one could try a new thing without
modifying a lot of the kernel; and didn't have to bother with managing a
large software project.
--- Omer
There is no IGLU Cabal. It was going to require a 100,000,000 line
long software package, and of course people DIED of drowning in all those
pesky coordination-type details while trying to develop, perfect and
maintain this monstrous but GREAT software package.
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