Linux Creator Calls Backporting ‘Good Thing’

Anonymous Reader writes “The creator of the Linux operating system, Linus Torvalds, has weighed in on the issue of backporting features from newer Linux kernels into older ones, calling the practice a good thing for the most part.

Torvalds comments, in an e-mail interview with internetnews.com, came after SUSE’S CTO, Juergen Geck, told an audience at the Real World Linux Conference in Toronto that Red Hat’s practice of backporting features from the 2.6 kernel into the 2.4 Kernel is a “bad thing” because it interferes with standardization of the
open source operating system.

Geck’s comments were part of a keynote theme that urged industry players to avoid practices that could fragment open source standardization efforts.

The comments sparked discussions in the open source community. When asked by e-mail to comment for internetnews.com, Torvalds wrote:

“I think it makes sense from a company standpoint to basically ‘cherry-pick’ stuff from the development version that they feel is important to their customers.
And in that sense I think the back-porting is actually a very good thing.””