[LAD] [ANNOUNCE] Safe real-time on the desktop by default; Desktop/audio RT developers, read this!

[Gene Heskett]

On Tuesday 23 June 2009, Bob Ham wrote:
>On Tue, 2009-06-23 at 00:49 +0200, Lennart Poettering wrote:
>> On Tue, 23.06.09 00:36, Fons Adriaensen (fons at kokkinizita.net) wrote:
>> > Since you claim that all the *Kit stuff is optional,
>>
>> (as a side note, I didn't claim that)
>>
>> > and you will still allow us to run our systems as we
>> > see fit, and since you wear a Red Hat, please tell
>> > me how to remove
>>
>> Just downgrade to FC5 or so.
>
>This response shows a real problem.  The fact that you cannot disable
>these kinds of services without forking shows there's a design problem.
>The fact that these badly-designed services have become so widespread
>shows a deeper problem.
>
>Recently, money seems to have become quite influential in the free
>software community, typified by Red Hat and its efforts to drive free
>software development in a direction that suits enterprise customers.
>The quoted response shows an unwillingness for these parties to
>*cooperate* with communities and instead I see a desire to *dictate* to
>communities.
>
>Yes, I can fork Fedora and create a new distribution but that takes a
>great deal of time and effort.  If Red Hat were interested in
>cooperating instead of dictating, that effort would not be needed; Red
>Hat would take on the responsibility of ensuring that their systems are
>flexible enough not to need a fork.  Practically, that means designing
>software systems in such a way as they can be easily disabled.
>
>
>Being fuelled by money, this new influence in free software is
>susceptible to the control of any parties willing to spend enough.  That
>opens the possibility of a fifth column within the free software
>community.  I've previously argued that in future, it may be necessary
>to protect the interests of free software by forking away from this
>influence if it starts behaving as a fifth column.
>
>The above response shows that this influence is already having a
>detrimental affect on the quality of free software.  I wonder if it
>won't be necessary to fork away from this influence, purely because of
>the sub-standard nature of the solutions it produces.
>
>RealtimeKit demonstrates this sub-standard nature in that it's a
>workaround.  It provides an API to be used if a system call fails.  This
>is not a problem in itself but there seems to be no desire to spend the
>time and effort needed to deal with the issue of why the system call is
>failing.  Instead, there seems to be only a narrow-minded drive to
>produce the next-best *Kit, which will provide an all-new service to
>enable our enterprise customers!
>
>It's great that all these new Kits are putting free software in the
>hands of average users.  What isn't great is that they seem to be
>hastily developed and without concern for the wider free software
>community.  There will be consequences of this lack of concern.
>
>Bob

+10,000

PA is one of the biggest screwups ever, but red hat can't see it.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
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