Plans for tomorrow's (20090529) FESCo meeting

[Bill Nottingham]

Richard W.M. Jones (rjones at redhat.com) said: 
> > FWIW, I'd certainly vote for a proposal to allow kmods if I get into FESCo
> > and may even bring such a proposal in front of the new FESCo (though IMHO
> > it should not be the old regime with explicit FESCo approval for each, that
> > didn't make any sense, instead there should be no restrictions other than a
> > license compatible with that of the kernel, and of course the restrictions
> > applying to all packages).
> 
> Could someone dispassionately summarise the reasons why kmods were
> rejected in the first place?  I assume the reason was the overhead of
> maintaining and updating out-of-tree kernel patches?

- Overhead of maintenance and updating
- Real-life experience of the existing kmod packages at the time *never* being
  up to date with the kernel
- As part of 'staying close to upstream', kmods... aren't
- It provides a crappy user experience with users, where they'll be stuck
  unable to upgrade, or boot, or use whatever functionality, until the
  maintainer is able to fix any issues with their kmod (as they will break
  with kernel changes)
- Increased maintenance for the kernel team, which they don't want (similar
  to the compat package policy)
- If a driver is headed upstream, and is needed... just add it to the kernel
  package proper

Bill