From Linus Torvalds <> Date Thu, 8 Mar 2012 15:40:26 -0800 Subject Re: [PATCH] sysfs: Optionally count subdirectories to support buggy applications On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 2:18 PM, Eric W. Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com> wrote:

>

> Keeping compatibility is easy enough that it looks like it is worth

> doing, but maintaining 30+ years of backwards compatibility



Stop right there.



This is *not* about some arbitrary "30-year backwards compatibility".



This is about your patch BREAKING EXISTING BINARIES.



So stop the f*&^ing around already. The patch was shown to be broken,

stop making excuses, and stop blathering.



End of story. Binary compatibility is more important than *any* of

your patches. If you continue to argue anything else or making

excuses, I'm going to ask people to just ignore your patches entirely.



Seriously. Binary compatibility is *so* important that I do not want

to have anything to do with kernel developers who don't understand

that importance. If you continue to pooh-pooh the issue, you only show

yourself to be unreliable. Don't do it.



Dammit, I'm continually surprised by the *idiots* out there that don't

understand that binary compatibility is one of the absolute top

priorities. The *only* reason for an OS kernel existing in the first

place is to serve user-space. The kernel has no relevance on its own.

Breaking existing binaries - and then not acknowledging how horribly

bad that was - is just about the *worst* offense any kernel developer

can do.



Because that shows that they don't understand what the whole *point*

of the kernel was after all. We're not masturbating around with some

research project. We never were. Even when Linux was young, the whole

and only point was to make a *usable* system. It's why it's not some

crazy drug-induced microkernel or other random crazy thing.



Really.



Linus





