Civil Infrastructure Platform to maintain 6.1 for 10 years: https://lwn.net/Articles/947606/

There are still things I don't understand, like how this is an official LF project, yet the SLTS kernels are not official stable (kernel.org) kernels. And Greg KH who maintains those official stable kernels is also working for LF and simultaneously completely against what CIP is doing: https://lore.kernel.org/all/Yvo2TnrUGoLKEY+v@kroah.com/ 🤨

@vegard

Good questions. :-D

Let me try a bite at one of those aspects:

> are not official stable (kernel.org) kernels

Wild guess: because SLTS doesn't follow the rules outlined in Documentation/process/stable-kernel-rules.rst?

@kernellogger @vegard neither does the LTS, though.
/me hides

@vegard Do you mean that it is surprising that two people working in the same organization have different point of view on some things?
Also, Linux Foundation gathers many different projects under its umbrella. Some stakeholders want (and pay for) CIP, others don't.

@krzk No, that's not surprising. I just think it sends a confusing message to downstream stable/LTS users.

@vegard LF does not send any message here, thus there cannot be a confusion from recipients of its message. Greg sent a message and CIP folks sent their own. What's more CIP folks never said they can support SLTS 10yo *generic* kernel... Basically the customers of CIP SLTS are not customers of stable kernels.

@krzk The CIP press release clearly states that it's from LF (with an LF logo, LF media contact, etc.) and Greg KH also uses his LF email address for all the stable work.

In the past, CIP wanted to continue using the stable tag format and it got NAKed: https://lore.kernel.org/all/Yg8%2FvxWzcc%2Fetxp+@kroah.com/

I personally find it a little confusing.

I'd maybe suggest that CIP have its own section on https://kernel.org/category/releases.html to clarify its status (especially with respect to LTS/stable).

@vegard I understand that. I was saying that LF is not involved here. CIP and Greg are different people. One maintains generic stable kernels, other maintain non-generic-long-term stable kernels. Why non-generic kernel should be mixed up with our generic stable kernels? Really, CIP is entirely different thing, so where's the confusing part?

@krzk Both are apparently working for or sponsored in some way by LF... yet you say LF is not involved. That seems contradictory to me.

I do understand that the projects are separate (and with slightly different goals). It's not entirely clear to me WHY they should be separate efforts. I'd have liked to see an open discussion of the rationale to keep the projects separate and pros/cons of tighter collaboration. Maybe that exists and I just haven't seen it, though.

@vegard Why should they be separate? Probably because no one using generic kernels should ever use CIP kernel? These two worlds - so CIP customers and everyone else - should never intersect?

@krzk It's really not obvious to me why this is or why it has to be this way. Maybe it's just me though 🙂