[pxc]

> I think he was already well aware at that time that keeping the driver interface unstable is his moat.

Does Linus have/want a moat? He's not a tech startup founder. He's a kernel hacker who has had success beyond his wildest dreams, and whose needs will be met for the rest of his working life no matter what happens.

It seems like projection to talk about this aspect of the kernel as if it's some intentional strategy for preventing certain kinds of competition.

[eikenberry]

I don't believe he wanted or intended a moat. The drivers need to be in the kernel to have a working kernel, that is a kernel that actually runs on the hardware. Move the drivers out of the kernel and Linux would have died long ago as there would have been a proliferation of proprietary drivers that stopped being maintained once the hardware was no longer on sale. And poor driver support is why no other kernel has taken root.

[pxc]

> Move the drivers out of the kernel and Linux would have died long ago as there would have been a proliferation of proprietary drivers that stopped being maintained once the hardware was no longer on sale.

Isn't this basically the situation on Android?

[SR2Z]

They're still in the kerenel AFAIK, but you need to compile the kernel specifically with a bunch of source-restricted or binary blobs to get things to work.

They're not open and maintained as part of the broader kernel release which is why the driver situation degrades so quickly once the hardware is no longer actively supported.