[ewg] [ANNOUNCE] OFED 4.8-rc2 release is available

[Doug Ledford]

[linux-rdma@ was accidentally dropped on my email, so readding it on
this response]

On 5/4/2017 2:44 PM, Hefty, Sean wrote:
>>> OFED is a software product of OFA, not Linux.  OFA can put anything
>>> that they want in it.  Why do you even care?  It's no different than
>>> Intel or Mellanox or any other company shipping out of tree
>>> software.
>>
>> The primary answer to your question depends on whether or not the
>> software will ever be upstreamed.  If it will, then it really should
>> go
>> there first and not later, and the reason is well exemplified by what
>> happened with XRC where the version that landed in OFED and the
>> version
>> that landed in upstream were two totally different things, and users
>> had
>> to go back and fix up all their code because of the difference once it
>> finally did land upstream.  It's not nice to put users in that
>> position
>> again, and this does sound like it might end up going down that exact
>> road since upstream is pursuing ways of doing peer to peer PCI
>> operations and such without any input from the Xeon Phi folks.
> 
> I'm not defending whatever business decisions any organization (including a multi-company non-profit like OFA) wants to make wrt their software distributions.  I'm claiming that that's their decision.
> 

I'm not sure I agree with that position.  A company has the right to
decide for themselves what to do.  An organization like the OFA is
different, in that it is based upon a collective agreement entered into
by multiple parties with certain specific stated intents and goals
written out in bylaws (although we all know the OFA is already in
violation of those at the moment, let's just assume they aren't for the
purposes of this conversation).  If the organization then takes to
violating those bylaws, it essentially becomes in breach of contract to
itself and all members that originally agreed to those bylaws to my lay
persons legal mind.  I would say that does give people (at a minimum,
any member of the organization who entered into this agreement under
different pretenses, but possibly also to non-member entities affected
by the actions of the organization) grounds to complain.

But all that aside, the OFA at least has a pretense of wanting to get
along with the upstream linux community.  As long as they want to
preserve that relationship, then they should listen when the community
has something to say.  It might well be their decision, but the
ramifications of that decision might sabotage their other interests.

-- 
Doug Ledford <dledford at redhat.com>
    GPG Key ID: B826A3330E572FDD
    Key fingerprint = AE6B 1BDA 122B 23B4 265B  1274 B826 A333 0E57 2FDD

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