> > A suitable fashion means someone submits it to Linus and promises to maintain
> > it and fix it.
>
> Is this documented somewhere?
Not "formally". But every now and then Linus or someone else posts something
to linux-kernel that elaborates on what they like to see done. I dimly recall
that there may also be something in the FAQ about it - have you read it?
> From one marketing front man to another:
Assuming you addressed this to Alan, I certainly don't regard him as a
'marketing front man' particularly. I don't know whether he does, but I doubt
it somehow.
> I respect your desire to keep the
> brand name pure, but what's in a number?
Well, for starters, the patchlevel (middle number) tells you whether it's
a stable version or not. You generally won't get new core features (i.e.
something that affects other code) into a stable release.
> Something for real marketing front men to put on a press release?
I guess the main version number (left-most) is kind of like that.
> What'd be really nice would be a system where people could directly submit
> branch material
If you mean, "submit material for a non-standard branch", then just create
a mailing list for the non standard branch, get people interested in said
branch to join it, and bob's your unicorn.
>, others could selectively check out branches,
Nothing to stop people publishing non-standard branches. Alan does it, and I
think Andrea has periodically as well. And of course there are the ELKS people,
and so on.
> and still others could (if they wished) re-join the branches.
Anyone who's got the source to both branches can do this.
> Linus could bless branches, so could you, but people should be able to roll
> their own to a much greater extent, if Linux is to maintain any kind of
> growing edge.
The kernel's GPL'd. Anyone can roll their own branch, and distribute it. This
is in fact what the distribution vendors do. Admittedly they don't tend to
deviate much, but that's not really relevant.
> Another lesson from history is the gcc/egcs development. I'd say Linux's in
> the balance now, but if I were intimately involved with the kernel, I'd be
> open-sourcing it as quickly as possible.
It /is/ "open-sourced" (ugh); that is, it's GPL'd and as such complies with
the OSI's open source definition and the DFSG, which are pretty much the
de-facto standards for the definition of "open source".
Can we drop this now? Or at least go to email?
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