Re: Stop the Linux kernel madness

[Petr Vandrovec]

On Tue, Jun 22, 2004 at 08:42:20PM +0200, Jan-Benedict Glaw wrote:
> On Tue, 2004-06-22 18:32:15 +0100, Christoph Hellwig <hch@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> wrote in message <20040622173215.GA6300@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> > On Tue, Jun 22, 2004 at 05:12:36PM +0200, Jan-Benedict Glaw wrote:
> > > Just merge the vmware modules upstream. Then, such breakage will be
> > > detected early and probably fixed without putting a lot of work into it
> > > (from your point of view).
> > 
> > a) vmware modules themselves aren't under a free license
> 
> That can be changed.

Yes.
 
> > b) even if they were there's not really much interest in modules that can't
> >    work with non-free userspace
> 
> ...as well as this issue. They'd get some (limited but sufficient) free
> maintainence for their software back. See? No technical issues 8^P The
> very same could be said about 4Front's OSS drivers.

I doubt. I emailed with Alan Cox back in 2000 (when VMware 2.0 was to be
released), and he told me that there is no way vmmon & vmnet could find
its way into kernel, regardless of license we'll pick. 

We do not have to go for examples very far - bochs currently does not
provide any networking backend which would work like real network card,
without any restrictions on MAC addresses, host-guest or guest-guest
communications. Patch to get it to work over vmnet's interface was task
for half of one afternoon. Would that change opinion of peoples who accept
only free software? I doubt...

So for now it will probably stay way it is - updates are semi-regullary
distributed from my site, some distros picks them up and repackage for
their customers, and everybody is happy that it more or less works.

						Best regards,
							Petr Vandrovec

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