Google forked the Linux kernel to make changes for the Android platform. The changes are not compatible with the mainline, yet one of the kernel developers, Greg K. H. has complained that Google isn’t actively trying to integrate these incompatible changes back into the mainline.
Its the kernel development team’s job to integrate new features into the mainline and Google has provided all the patches for them to do so, should they want to. However, Greg doesn’t think this is enough. He feels that forking the kernel goes against the “spirit of the GPL and open source community”.
Up until this point, the open source community has been strongly in favour of forking. If you don’t like the way a piece of software does something, fork it and make it do what you want. Greg, however, feels the kernel is sacred. Fork everything, just not his precious kernel.
Naturally, he’s got no problem with the fact that there are a multitude of incompatible window managers (Gnome, KDE, Compiz, etc.) or a deluge of incompatible audio stacks (OSS, ALSA, etc.) or a handful of incopatible file systems (EXT, ReiserFS, etc.). Those somehow manage to maintain “the spirit of open source” by forking totally incompatible differences from each other.
The real reason he doesn’t want to see the mainline kernel split in any way is ego. If the totally-GPL-compliant Android kernel gains more marketshare than mainline Linux does, it won’t have anything to do with him, and in his eyes this simply cannot be.
Comments
All may be forked except the kernel, the kernel is sacred.
Just another example of how the free software movement isn’t truly about freedom. They go on and on about how open source is awesome because you can take code and do what you want with it, but then they end up having some issue when people end up doing exactly that.
I just someone to go tell Greg KH to go read the GPL, seriously.
Someone should post this directly on his blog, if possible.
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