Kernel Log: Who�s responsible for troubleshooting and quality assurance?

“Recently, a Red Hat developer got rid of a flaw in an Intel
graphics driver, probably for a special corporate customer. For
years, the flaw had been a thorn in the side of numerous users of
systems with the 945GM chip-set. Now, Theodore ‘tytso’ Tso has
stated in a discussion on LKML that users have to accept more
responsibility for troubleshooting and quality assurance.

“A change recently implemented in kernel 2.6.35 shows how
developers from different companies collaborate on the kernel, what
good support contracts with Linux distributors are, and how
commercial interests influence the development of Linux and
troubleshooting. The change was made by Red Hat’s DRM subsystem
maintainer Dave Arlie to solve some stability problems and prevent
crashes that reportedly occurred on a lot of systems with Intel’s
945GM, which was launched in 2006 and is mainly used in
notebooks.

“Developers have known about the problem for years because a
large number of users reported it (1). As Arlie writes in the
git-pull-request, there was an “enterprise reason” for this change
and other corrections made to the DRM subsystem…”

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