"People who think SD was 'perfect' were simply ignoring reality," Linus Torvalds began in a succinct explanation as to why he chose the CFS scheduler written by Ingo Molnar instead of the SD scheduler written by Con Kolivas. He continued, "sadly, that seemed to include Con too, which was one of the main reasons that I never [entertained] the notion of merging SD for very long at all: Con ended up arguing against people who reported problems, rather than trying to work with them." He went on to stress the importance of working toward a solution that is good for everyone, "that was where the SD patches fell down. They didn't have a maintainer that I could trust to actually care about any other issues than his own." Update: OSNews user superstoned pointed us to the other side of the story.
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Member since:2005-07-07
You're extremely rude to Con, and it's both inappropriate and wrong. I (and many others) don't care wether SD or CFS got merged - Ingo's a great guy (and he and Con don't have a fight) and CFS is good. The problem is the way Con is treated. And that's not due to Con's behaviour - the discussion on swap-prefetch is still ongoing (I follow it, partly) and it's just as bad as it was when he participated. He actually deflamed several discussions.
You seriously don't know Con, do you? He's a very kind, responsive person. It's the kernel-ppl who where behaving very in-crowd and rude, not him. He gave (as good as possible) technical reasons, they rejected him repeatedly for the same, already proven wrong, reasons. I deliberately talk 'they' here, because it has not been one person, nor always the same people. Andrew has imho been unresponsive on occasions, but less so on others. Ingo has not always been very supportive or smart, on the other hand - he's a good guy.
I'm sure email as a way of communication has been to blame as well, not all arguments where meant as rude as they sounded.
All in all, what I'm trying to say is the situation was complex, not black&white, but YOUR account is totally off...
How do I know? I don't know everything perfectly or something, but I've been following Con's mailinglist for many years, and I've seen the good and the bad.
Member since:
2005-07-08
He's doing the rounds on the interview circuit, explaining that computers are dumb and boring, and how there's a vast right-wing conspiracy to make Linux unsuitable for desktop users. He's telling people that he has solutions to a variety of problems with desktop operating systems, but nobody will listen to him. The fact that the kernel community rejected his work is apparently a slap in the face to Linux desktop users.
This is, at best, bad advocacy. He's coming off like those whiny kids that go on talk shows defending that movie on how 9/11 was an inside job. Maybe they're right. I don't know. But they moan and groan and stomp their feet and nearly break out in tears when the guy from Popular Mechanics tries to calmly refute their theories. It's impossible to believe them because they just can't control their frustration.
That's poisonous personality. It means you don't get what you want, even when you're right. It means that other hackers working on desktop performance issues cringe in embarrassment that this guy is representing them in public. This isn't how Linux kernel developers are supposed to act. The kernel community should not encourage this kind of behavior.
The Rubik's Cube kid that screwed up solving the cube blindfolded on national television and got really upset. Nobody thinks he sucks at Rubik's Cube, but he might have more fundamental shortcomings.
EDIT: It was a close call, and a decision had to be made. There wasn't a definitive argument for either solution, but it doesn't make sense to merge both. Somebody was going to get pissed off. Linus ended up pissing off the developer who would get most pissed off and who has the more vocal supporters.
Would there be outcry if SD was chosen over CFS? We'll never know, because in the end, Linus made what he thought was the safe decision. A lot of people are unhappy, and I'm not sure that was avoidable. That's my final comment on this issue.
Edited 2007-07-28 14:01