Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off

Re:Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off by lovich on Monday September 17, 2018 @01:50AM (#18003510)

No offense but this seems like blinding fanaticism for a man who is, admitedly right 99.99999% of the other time, not perfect.

In this case however you are arguing that when he said, "we don't break userland, period" he instead meant the opposite? There was no asterix on his statement saying to read the fine print.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off by LukeShu on Monday September 17, 2018 @12:47PM (#18007554)

What he said was (AFAICT, the exact "we don't break userland, period" wording only appears in this HN thread. Let's go with the rant that I believe the GP was referencing):

The "first rule of kernel maintenance":

    If a change results in user programs breaking, it's a bug in the
    kernel. We never EVER blame the user programs.

Then later, to drive home the point:

    WE DO NOT BREAK USERSPACE!

So, sure, "there was no asterix on his statement saying to read the fine print"--he did better than an asterisk and fine print, he made it part of the main content.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off by wolf550e on Monday September 17, 2018 @12:49PM (#18007584)

By "userland" Linus meant actual users of the Linux kernel, not all possible theoretical users of the Linux kernel. For example, if there is a program that just uses quirks of implementation to fingerprint the kernel version, it will get broken all the time and will need updating every kernel release, but as long as people's actual servers, phones, desktops and IoT devices keep working without changes, that's not a breaking change.

[ Parent | on HN ]