-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi all - Some of you have seen my posts on this list before, but it may not be clear what my involvement is with kernel development. I lead one of the kernel teams in SUSE Labs. I maintain the master branch of the SUSE kernel trees (both SLE and openSUSE) and have been the release manager for the kernel for the past few openSUSE releases (as well as a few enterprise releases). Historically, some decisions have been made that affect the openSUSE kernel collaboratively, but not entirely transparently, and I'd like to change that. One of our policies regarding kernel updates is that we'll fix bugs pertaining to usability until the next release. Otherwise, it's security, data loss/corruption, and system crash fixes until EOL. While it could be argued that hardware enablement falls under usability, we haven't treated it that way in the past. I'd like to revisit that. I was asked today about the possibility of adding a driver to the 11.2 kernel, and I started thinking about it. Strictly speaking, it's against our inclusion policy. However, the new longer release cycle means that users with new hardware may be forced to run a Factory kernel on 11.2, switch to a different distribution, or wait around until the next release. While I don't personally have a problem with option #1, I'm a kernel hacker and kernel bugs don't scare me. Not everyone wants to be a beta tester. Option #2 isn't in the long-term interests of the openSUSE community. Option #3 is painful because it means that you have this shiny new hardware for which you've paid your hard-earned money and can't use to its fullest potential. The particular driver I was asked about is completely standalone. I don't have a problem including it since it won't affect anything else. The issue was that I don't want to encourage the expectation that this would be a normal occurrence - unless we want to change the policy surrounding updates. I should be clear on what I have in mind and what the limitations are. I do not intend to open the door for every crap driver that's floating around out there. There are reasons that the drivers aren't in the mainline kernel and I have no interest in duplicating that debate on this list. Drivers up for post-release inclusion _must_ be already in the mainline kernel. The other limitation is that the changes be completely standalone or isolated such that it's apparent that the introduction of the change doesn't affect the stability of users who are using those drivers already. That part can get sticky since adding a PCI ID is easy, but adding handling that is needed to enable that PCI ID while potentially affecting other devices in a clean way is not. So with that, I'd like to open it up for discussion. I've cross-posted between opensuse-factory and opensuse-kernel since it's a policy that affects everyone, not just those interested in the kernel itself. - -Jeff - -- Jeff Mahoney SUSE Labs -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.12 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with SUSE - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAksm4ecACgkQLPWxlyuTD7LD7QCeK9lDtJo6h/LcRnfng93+i0Pc Hv0An2Wnb1N41xxLSQjB830w1SwGdiUQ =Fwo1 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-kernel+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-kernel+help@opensuse.org