this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2024
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Yes that's what a fork is, a disagreement with upstream's direction and taking your own measures. Git is a decentralized version control system that allows for this.
Deblob scripts and regularly checking the source code for complying licenses. They regularly follow upstream kernel releases and are the first ones to signal license issues and inconsistencies.
I should have been more specific. Virtually all drivers in the upstream Linux kernel are licensed under a libre license. However, manufacturer firmware (small amounts of code designed to "unlock" the device's capabilities) are distributed as a binary blob that gets loaded into your computer (you're allowed to redistribute the firmware in binary form, but not anything else). The Linux kernel's upstream (aka Torvalds and other high level maintainer's own trees) allows the use of nonfree firmware for device support (AKA getting your foot into the door). In short, no modern computer device that people use regularly is free from private tampering. Who are these "private" tamperers? The US-led digital empire.
If you have a machine (or more likely, a virtual machine) that doesn't require device firmware, then linux-libre is the superior kernel as it subtracts the space and attack vector costs of nonfree firmware. We aren't at that point yet as CPU microcode is far too important to give up on physical hardware, but for nations in the Global South with the engineering capacity, linux-libre does all the work of de-westernizing the kernel.
You don't need a decentralized version control system to fork, you can do it in Perforce or SVN or whatever too.
That's all, just wanted to pedantically correct this thing.
What's your point here? That volunteers not financially backed by the US regime don't magically have the capacity to reverse engineer the dozens upon dozens of blobs that get added to the kernel every release cycle? Or that they're even trying at all? Both aren't a good look for whatever you're trying to say
Now you're just being vindictive towards others and I really don't like that. It doesn't cost anything to not be unkind towards people's contributions. You're free to criticize the approach but I draw the line at the idea that it is worthless because none of this work is.
it's still a useful thing to have exist even if it doesn't meet your arbitrary standard of a "real" fork
for people that aren't severe linux-heads, recreating what they've done and producing a working kernel without blobs and such would be non-trivial to impossible.