Memo to Con Kolivas: why not roll your own?

Sam Varghese
Thursday, 26 July 2007 07:53

Opinion and Analysis

It is a tough road to follow but then all the hard work that Kolivas has put in would not go down the drain if he did so.

There are some other similarities between Kolivas de Raadt; Kolivas suffered from a prolapsed disk, with all that time spent on the keyboard coding definitely contributing to the cause (he works as an anaesthetist). De Raadt suffered from RSI for a while and could not code.

If Kolivas feels embittered, no doubt there are others among the 1000-plus developers who contribute patches to the Linux kernel who have similar tales to tell. Tales of feeling rejected, tales of creating patches aimed at users and then finding out that the directions of the project could not accommodate those changes.

This lot could well band together and create a fork.

In 1999, the Samba project was forked for similar reasons as those cited by Kolivas. The new project was called Samba-TNG. To quote from their website : "The most important reason (for the fork): differences of opinion on the overall software architecture. While the two projects share a large common codebase, there are some important differences in the way some bits are put together."

And further, "Samba is a large, well-established project with a great deal of corporate interest and involvement. As such, they have to be very careful when making large changes to their code. This has led to the attitude that the code repository should be kept pretty much in working condition at all times, making it difficult to implement experimental changes and improvements."

Projects that fork do not have to be hostile to the parent; as the Samba-TNG site points out: "While there is rivalry between the two projects, it is not hostile. On the contrary, code is frequently synchronized (sic) between the two projects in areas where we agree. We also routinely refer prospective users to Samba in cases where it would better fit the user's needs."

Samba founder Andrew Tridgell wasn't angry about the fork: "Everyone pretty much knows now that the Samba codebase has forked, with the TNG branch being split off into a new set of releases. Despite some hilarious reports this is actually a good thing." There's plenty more to back up his argument at this site.

So why don't the Linux kernel developers who are feeling on the outer join together and create a fork? Even if it brings together just the few things which Kolivas created, a massive multitude would benefit.