M Harris wrote:
On Thursday 30 November 2006 13:47, Anders Johansson wrote:
Novell's head of kernel development is Greg Kroah-Hartman. Now we're getting someplace...
... this is what I am really getting at... and I genuinely am seeking knowledge; what does it mean to be head of kernel development at Novell? ... or anywhere else for that matter? (see Greg Freemyer's explanation)
Is the kernel that ships with Suse the "official" kernel that I can download from the official site unmodified <?> or, is it modified by kernel development at Novell? note: I am not asking whether the kernel has non gpl code at this point... only whether Novell kernel development modifies the official kernel before redistribution and redistributes it under the gpl license, or--- whether Novell modifies the kernel via the process Freemyer described?
It is a SuSE modified kernel for SuSE's dist only. The additions SuSE put into it are only 'blessed' by SuSE not by the 'official' kernel community.
And I have another question along the same lines... consider:
"Linux 2.6.15 consists of 18,811 files and 7,290,070 lines of code."
Folks, that's a lot of lines of code... what I want to know is how many of them were coded (patched) by Novell kernel development? What do those patches do? How many of those patches, or future patches, will M$ control behind the scenes... and if Freemyer's explanation is correct... how can we be sure that the "patches" that get through are *ok*. And I don't mean gpl vs non gpl... and I don't mean legal vs illegal... this is a control issue for me... I mean, controlled by M$ to provide degradation of performance, or a back-door, or anything else... that gets slipped by the watch-dogs on the Linus team----- *
SuSE, but only SuSE, controls every line of code in every kernel they ship. But kernels they ship are NOT the 'official linux kernel'. The only way to get that is from kernel.org. And every thing there goes through the 'official kernel community' before it is released. I can only assume that the 'official kernel community' would catch anything 'wrong' that a possible Novell employed contributor might contribute or attempt to contribute. However if I'm not mistaken SuSE does employ some considered 'in the official kernel community'. Even so, very few lines of code get in the official kernel without many people seeing them first. Mark -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org