> The apparent inability (and perhaps more importantly - total unwilling[n]ess) from the PaX team to be able to see what makes sense in a long-term general kernel and what does not, and split things up and try to push the sensible things up (and know which things are too ugly or too specialized to make sense), caused many PaX features to never be merged.
In a comment [0] the PAX team says
> we never ever considered submitting grsecurity or PaX for mainline inclusion [...] anything similar in the past was user action, not on our behalf
I don't know how Spengler and PAX relate.
Torvalds does great work. Spengler does great work. The kernel team does great work. The PaX team does great work. Torvalds is not always the easiest person to get along with. Spengler is not always the easiest person to get along with. Life is sometimes complicated. None of this takes away from anyone's achievements.
You see this back and forth happening over at Windows as well where continued backwards compatibility is weighed against future security.
Just look at the more restricted capabilities of anything WUP vs Win32 (never mind Win16).
It must be particularly irritating in Spengler's case, because he works in a field where most of the best people make millions turning poorer versions of the same ideas into commercial products that only huge companies ever get to play with, while he spends his career arguing with upstream and taking shit from people on message boards.