“The keeper of the TurboLinux kernel tree, Christian ‘DocWhat’
Holtje has written to us clearing up the company’s position to its
load-balancing patch to the Linux kernel.”
“So let the man speak: “TurboLinux is not going to fork the
kernel. One little module does not fork the kernel. Lots of
projects do this, including advanced RAID, USB (originally) and
PCMCIA. They are not “forks” but independently maintained
enhancements.“
“The difference is we keep our ‘patches’ up to date with the
core kernel. We don’t try to maintain the whole thing separately.
If we forked the kernel, we would have to maintain it entirely
ourselves. This would lose all the advantages of Open Source (large
pool of bug fixers, enhancements in areas we don’t have a pressing
need for, etc.). There is no point to it. Frankly, I feel faint
just thinking about the work that would be required.”