"First, people need to realize that our driver model is different than other operating systems, because all our drivers ship with the kernel. The license requires our drivers to be open, so everything is in the main kernel tree.
"Because of our huge rate of change, they pretty much have to be in the kernel tree. Otherwise, keeping a driver outside the kernel is technically a very difficult thing to do, because our internal kernel APIs change very, very rapidly.
"In other operating systems, APIs change more slowly, since their development process is comparatively very slow. So, it makes sense, from a technical standpoint and just to save money, to get your code into the kernel. It is maintained that way, and when changes happen within the kernel, your driver code will be fixed for you. If I have to change an API, I change it everywhere."
