Linus Torvalds on FreeBSD's Use of Copy-on-write

[Poul-Henning Kamp]

In message <200604240633.k3O6XUJ0042841 at chez.mckusick.com>, Kirk McKusick write
s:
>Anyone working on zero-copy sockets care to respond to this?

I will strongly recommend that nobody does.

First: _maybe_ relevant and competent benchmarks will _eventually_
vindicate one or the other approach, but in all likelyhood, the
difference is a wash for all real-world, practical purposes.

Second: nobody is going to convince anybody about anything on a
topic where the fronts have been drawn up so sharp from the beginning.
Time spent on tilting windmills is time not spent on the code.

Third: Linus has internal project fights to fight, and this could
quite likely be part of internal Linux bickering that got out of
hand.

If any kind of official response should be generated, it should
be humorous and mostly non-insulting.  Something like:

	The FreeBSD Project has taken Linus recent comments "ad
	notam".  We usually hold Linus' technical competence and
	judgement in high regard, but if we are indeed "incompetent
	idiots" people should really not trust us on that point.

would do fine.

Poul-Henning

-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk at FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe    
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.