I’d argue that most mainstream FOSS is extremely strong. Something like 80% of servers and 60% of smartphones run Linux. Up until recently, Cloudflare was using Nginx for their entire CDN. The thing they replaced it with is technically also FOSS. Probably most computers in the world are using OpenSSL or GNUTLS.

I think the real “weakness” of FOSS is that they don’t have the money or the desire to schmooze corporate decision makers. They also don’t have sexy GUIs, but anyone could contribute that if they wanted.

I didn’t include the social media “brigading” portion because Linus already addressed that in a different sub-thread.

I don’t know if there’s any precedence for this, but I could see a court asking to see the git commit log if things went that far.

I always advocate for FOSS solutions at my work, but most of the time I get shut down with some variation of “We prefer $MSP’s solution because it gives us someone else to blame if shit hits the fan”. I hate that sentiment, but I appreciate the honesty.

My job title is “Linux System Administrator”. I’d quit if they tried to make me drop Linux.

Could someone please explain this post?

The boiled down summary is:

1. Abdiel Janulgue submits the patch to Christoph Hellwig

2. Christoph rejects the patch because he doesn’t want to maintain it

3. Danilo Krummrich offers to maintain it

4. Christoph says no and that he “will do everything [he] can do to stop [Rust support from being added to the DMA subsystem]”

5. Hector Martin adds Linus and says “If Linus doesn’t pipe up with an authoritative answer to this thread, Miguel and the other Rust folks should just merge this series once it is reviewed and ready, ignoring Christoph’s overt attempt at sabotaging the project.”

6. Linus says “How about you accept the fact that maybe the problem is you. You think you know better. But the current process works.”

By saying that Hector is the problem, he’s implicitly saying that Christoph is not the problem. By saying that the current process works–the very same process that just prevented R4L from submitting patches to the kernel, he’s implicitly endorsing Christoph’s actions.

Interesting! Thanks for the source.

It looks like short haul flights actually produce 12% less emissions than driving.

IANACS but I think the levels of pollution are actually similar.

Nevermind, that’s awesome. Is he looking for additional friends?

You’re probably right from a legal perspective, but the difference between “donation” and “salary” is pretty murky in this context.

Slightly OT but I always thought Asahi Lina was a woman. TIL.

Linus can merge whatever patches he wants to, and the stonewalling subsystem maintainers would have to deal with it–like he did with the eBPF scheduler. R4L maintainers already wrote the patches, they literally just needed to be merged.

Take this case, it all started over a bit of code. The subsystem maintainer refuses to take it. But it does not require any changes to existing code. It just has to be merged. Linus can take it directly. If he does that, the Rust folks can start to use it. The sub-system maintainer will lose in the end. At some point, the battle will be lost by those trying to block Rust. It all depends on Linus. We will see.

Linus hasn’t been merging the necessary code, by virtue of supporting a maintainer who was very obviously trying to sabotage R4L; if Linus was going to stand up for R4L, this would have been the time.

Debian testing just isn’t a very good rolling release disto

What makes you say that?

It’s a dilemma; most Windows and Mac users would benefit from that kind of locked-down, idiot-proof format. Even having the choice of multiple repos is too much for them. So while I personally hate it, that’s what most people (i.e. non-Linux users) want and need.

I recommend Ubuntu as the beginner distro for everyone, but with the hope that they eventually drop the training wheels and switch to Debian.

It’s more than that. Ubuntu copies the Debian repos and then applies their own changes on top. Debian has a native (DEB) Firefox package, so Ubuntu specifically has to remove it for every new version.