Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [MAINTAINER TOPIC] ABI feature gates?

[Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>]

On Thu, Aug 10, 2017 at 11:21 PM, NeilBrown <neilb@suse.com> wrote:
>
> With this pattern, people can still trust an X.Y kernel,

I do *NOT* want people to trust an X.Y kernel.

Quite the opposite.

I want people to realize that the version doesn't matter, and that
they should feel safe in upgrading. The X and the Y don't matter, and
they *MUST*NOT*MATTER*.

If they do, the process is completely and utterly broken.

So what people should be able to trust is that they can always upgrade.

Not the shit that I see *ALL* the time, where you upgrade something,
and it breaks.

And no, the excuse "but the API was new in X.Y, so it could change in
X.Y+1" does *not* hold water.

It very much violates that basic principle of trust and makes people
go "I don't want to upgrade, because it might break something I do".

                    Linus