Re: Stop the Linux kernel madness

[Jan-Benedict Glaw <jbglaw@lug-owl.de>]

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On Fri, 2004-06-18 13:17:31 -0400, Paul Jakma <paul@clubi.ie>
wrote in message <Pine.LNX.4.60.0406181316270.3231@fogarty.jakma.org>:
> On Fri, 18 Jun 2004, Jan-Benedict Glaw wrote:
> >For what I guess, those should better be native Indian speakers...
> 
> Hmm, my indian colleagues speak perfect english. Why make this 
> comment at all btw...

>From my current view, there's a lot of work being done in and around
India. I think that's a great thing for an upcoming country. However the
sad thing is that those hackers seem to work behind quite closed doors
(or little internet access). I commonly see this situation:

	- Nobody (except their bosses) know about their work. It's
	  nowhere announced, published or discusses.
	- They just work, but sometimes miss to *think* about their
	  work. Why should anybody work on a 2.4.16 codebase if there's
	  2.4.26 available? Heck, they're missing > 2 years of
	  development and bug fixes!
	- They often ask stupid/bogus questions in such a way that I
	  think they were poorly prepared by whomever is paying for the
	  work to do their job. I fear that problems are solved (on a
	  regular basis) by trial-and-error (and putting 20 people to
	  solve a single problem) than by first discussing it.

While looking at the questions, my thoughts are typically:

	- They could do a *really* good job iff they were better
	  integrated into LKML and other mailing lists. They need to
	  read, and they need ask. Starting hacking with no
	  well-designed idea for a solution is the poorest design of
	  problem solving I've ever seen.
	- A lot of (valueable) work is being done, but LKML and the
	  vanialla tree will typically never ever see it. It's done, put
	  into some embedded device, sold, and never ever touched again.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not against Indian people (in fact, I do have
quite some email contacts on regular basis to some eg. Bangladeshi
people). I'm just a little sad about the whole lot of effort that's lost
IMHO on a regular basis, *and* that those guys over there get so little
help (because they seem to not have a steady internet uplink for their
use).

MfG, JBG

-- 
   Jan-Benedict Glaw       jbglaw@lug-owl.de    . +49-172-7608481
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