Comments

• Michael

  2008-06-19 02:00:31

  "upstreaming" never really existed. If they have any patches that are worth it they might be used by other vendors, but they are unlikely too because then they would have to maintain them too. BTW almost every distribution adds patches which may not be in the kernel.org kernel, to try and tweak the system for their purpose. It goes for every package. Debian always patched Evolution when they packaged it, but never sent the patches to the maintainers (even if most of them weren't suitable - e.g. rebranding).
  
  I don't know about the others but with Novell you could never re-compile your kernel and still get any of the support you paid for - if you bought it in the first place. It sort of voids your warrantee (I can't remember the specifics, and maybe i read it wrong). This rubbed me up the wrong way when I worked there - they're effectively restricting the freedom of their users. There are of course sound business reasons for this - it is impossible/costly to support every custom installation. But then again, what are you paying for then?
  
  Until useless middle-managers realise that the words 'fully supported by vendor' are basically meaningless, this sort of marketing gunk will keep going on. If redhat had the same xen patches yet a purchaser chose suse because of those worthless comforting words from microsoft, then why should redhat bother? It's all about positioning their own offering in the market place, and they seem to be doing quite well so far.
  
  Anyway - the market will work this out if it is allowed to. Press releases aren't illegal, and don't sway everyone. When your competitor is faster to market with lower overheads because they downloaded ubuntu of a local file server for nothing and you bought vista server, and dealt with the costs of maintaining it, you'll soon get smart or lose out.

• Roy Schestowitz

  2008-06-19 03:32:02

  Michael,
  
  Yes, I am aware of distro-specific tweaks and customisations, but here you have something rather fundamental. Why would Novell work with VMWare and Xen in isolation for example? This seems suitable for mainline, just like KVM.

• John Wilson

  2008-06-19 20:36:32

  At one time there was an effort to include a Xen module in the kernel. That was in the days before Citrix had its hands all over it.
  
  Nor is VMWare eligible for mainline in the kernel for the simple reason that it's proprietary closed source software.
  
  Also, for that reason, VMWare isn't a standard no matter how much they (and you, it appears) would like it to be.
  
  FYI, I've seen kernels tuned for Virtual Box and VMWare in Mandriva, Debian, Ubuntu and on and on. No doubt in Fedora/RedHat as well particularly their server product.
  
  I don't, though I could be wrong, think VMWare is going to exclude the top business distro (RedHat) to play games with Novell which is clearly #2 without a bullet in server share.
  
  If Novell and SUSE want to do this then fine as long as they play by the rules and the resulting tuned kernel is GPL'd with source available or it, not anyone else, stands an excellent chance of finding itself isolated.
  
  ttfn
  
  John