[SEJeff]

Well I recall a somewhat recent case where you mentioned how there was one of features (I want to say it was the KASLR) that depended on another feature which still isn't in. You (spender in specific) mentioned on LWN how basically the feature was no good without the other 1/2 and the two changes were both somewhat invasive (in the Linux kernel context what Linus would consider invasive). I'm not saying you're wrong in any way or that you developed all 8+MB of code in 1 chunk. I'm saying you design your components to go together and depend on eachother, not to be split up individually and added sort of kind of willing/nilly.

Did I get that wrong? From reading Brad on LWN for literally years wank about Linux security (he's absolutely not wrong to complain), this was my take. Or it could be summarized as (this is satire):

    PaxTeam: This is our code, it is open source, it is more secure than the dumpsterfire that is upstream, take it if you want it.
    
    Linux Upstream: That is nice, now break it into 1000 individual patches each independently git bisect-able. Also, can you change the interfaces of these design flaws in Linux and THEN entirely re-do your well tested patch to match the way we do code upstream and match the interfaces we would *like* Linux to have that we're going to expect you to code for us.
    
    PaxTeam: No, we want to do more interesting things like build more secure patches for Linux and look at pictures of cats on the internet, as it was designed to be used for.
    
    Linux Upstream: ...

[PaXTeam]

i don't quite get what you're arguing now... are you stating that when there're functional dependencies between components, we should somehow ignore them when incorporating them into a larger piece? say, the kernel should get a NIC driver before it got a network stack at all? if you're not arguing that then i don't see why different rules should apply to the security features we have...

as for your satire, it's just got one thing wrong, but that kinda kills the rest of it: we never said "take it if you want it" and thus we never embarked on the rest of that journey.