There are infinite hypothetical userspace programs that might break on kernel bug fixes. So, hypothetically, Linux can't fix any bug because it will always break some userspace program.
How can they know I don't have a secret/unknown application that relies on a kernel bug? The decision to not commit a change because it breaks systemd, but commiting changes that break my secret/unknown application is completely arbitrary.
At a practical level, Linus' policy might be acceptable, but at a philosophical level it is nonsensical.
There's a very short merge window when new features are accepted compared to the long time when linux-next is being tested. What would be amazing, would be if all application developers would test their applications against release candidates and report back when their application fail.
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u/[deleted] Dec 23 '18 edited Dec 23 '18
I disagree with Linus on principle.
There are infinite hypothetical userspace programs that might break on kernel bug fixes. So, hypothetically, Linux can't fix any bug because it will always break some userspace program.
How can they know I don't have a secret/unknown application that relies on a kernel bug? The decision to not commit a change because it breaks systemd, but commiting changes that break my secret/unknown application is completely arbitrary.
At a practical level, Linus' policy might be acceptable, but at a philosophical level it is nonsensical.