Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AMD responds to Linux kernel maintainer's rejection of AMDGPU patch

lists.freedesktop.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 284 posts

Re: AMD responds to Linux kernel maintainer's rejection of AMDGPU patch

#3

Post by imaginenore »

What I don't get is how one kernel maintainer can make such a massive decision that affects all of Linux. That's some near-totalitarian level of power.

After reading the arguments, I'm kind of on AMD's side. I get what Dave wants, but it seems extremely idealistic.

Re: AMD responds to Linux kernel maintainer's rejection of AMDGPU patch

#5

Post by gigatexal »

imaginenore wrote: post #3

What I don't get is how one kernel maintainer can make such a massive decision that affects all of Linux. That's some near-totalitarian level of power. After reading the arguments, I'm kind of on AMD's side. I get what Dave wants, but it seems extremely idealistic.

That's how the kernel development works. As far as I can tell, if you get maintainer status from Linus you can do as you please for the understanding is that you're acting as he would.

Re: AMD responds to Linux kernel maintainer's rejection of AMDGPU patch

#7

Post by lettergram »

I do feel Dave went a bit over the top in his response. If he keeps it technical it's easier to fix, people want to see their stuff merged. When he makes it personal (which he kind of did) it turns people off.

That being said, I do think Dave probably made the right call, but I also think he may need to compromise on this one. That being said, AMD should strategicly try and get their GPUs supported. Couple that, with merging an OpenCL version of Tensorflow or something and AMD would probably be more valuable than Nvidia. I think both groups could benefit and should probably sit and try to work it out in person.

Re: AMD responds to Linux kernel maintainer's rejection of AMDGPU patch

#9

Post by chx »

gigatexal wrote: post #5
imaginenore wrote: post #3

What I don't get is how one kernel maintainer can make such a massive decision that affects all of Linux. That's some near-totalitarian level of power. After reading the arguments, I'm kind of on AMD's side. I get what Dave wants, but it seems extremely idealistic.

That's how the kernel development works. As far as I can tell, if you get maintainer status from Linus you can do as you please for the understanding is that you're acting as he would.

As Dave said:

> Given the choice between maintaining Linus' trust that I won't merge 100,000 lines of abstracted HAL code and merging 100,000 lines of abstracted HAL code I'll give you one guess where my loyalties lie.

He is acting in a way he thinks would keep Linus' trust. Also, usually the maintainers have far superior technical knowledge of their areas to Linus. I mean, Linus is just one guy and each maintainer have their own specialty.

Re: AMD responds to Linux kernel maintainer's rejection of AMDGPU patch

#10

Post by jff »

aqtrans wrote: post #8

Did I miss the mud-slinging and corporate culture bashing from the original rejection? I can get the AMD dev being a bit sour by the whole situation if they personally spent time working on this rejected patch, but damn.

There were certainly implications that the AMD coders were making technically compromised decisions:

> The reason the toplevel maintainer (me) doesn't work for Intel or AMD or any vendors, is that I can say NO when your maintainers can't or won't say it.

And telling them to sit in a corner and really THINK about what you've done, young man:

> I'd like some serious introspection on your team's part on how you got into this situation and how even if I was feeling like merging this (which I'm not) how you'd actually deal with being part of the Linux kernel and not hiding in nicely framed orgchart silo behind a HAL. I honestly don't think the code is Linux worthy code

All pretty mild, really, but I'm not the one who got the email telling me my months of work was not Linux-quality and would not be merged.

(I am giggling at the idea of "Linux quality" being held up as an ideal)

Post reply on HN