[Tinkerphones] Librem 5

[David Boddie]

On Sat, 13 Feb 2021 20:28:01 +0100 Dr. Michael Lauer wrote:

> When I was younger, I could understand the ?fixation? on getting things into
> mainline ? now, with more years on my back, I believe things would have
> turned out differently if we were to follow the path of most commercial
> developers ? which is, freezing the kernel at one point of time to allow
> the rest of the folks to move forward without a moving target.
> 
> Later on, perhaps, submit stuff upstream, jump to another mainline kernel
> (if necessary), rinse and repeat.

I agree. The focus on mainlining everything is above and beyond what the
license requires.

It's great if someone can check out the latest kernel and build it for a
device, but some patches are never going to get upstream. Also, if your users
need additional stuff to get a working device, having a buildable mainline
kernel is of limited use.

Upstreaming everything is also an overhead that most projects can't afford
unless you want to tie your features to the release schedules of your
dependencies. One option is to get your upstreams on-board with your plans,
but that's also a drain on resources. You also have to give up some control,
which can be a difficult thing to accept.

David