Re: [GNU-linux-libre] linux ppc micropatch.c: why keep it?

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Aug 31, 2021, Jeff Moe <moe@forksand.com> wrote:

> In the end, I didn't use gNewsense's tools, nor review their work.

Thanks, that's useful information, that makes it clear I misplaced trust
on the double-checking I had assumed.

> I *started* to go thru their kernel, but it was false positive after
> false positive, since they had been using the Ubuntu kernel, not the
> Linus kernel.

Well...  AFAIK Ubuntu backports drivers and stuff, but I don't know that
they integrate stuff that isn't going to eventually get merged, so
recognizing false positives present in their kernel versions may not be
useful for corresponding upstream release, but it's likely that it would
be useful for subsequent upstream releases, so it wouldn't be wasted
work if automated.

IIUC you did that mostly manually (an heroic job IMHO; I can't ever
thank enough you and others who went through it), though, so...  Yeah,
frustrating and pointless.

> I should also point out, I'm a sysadmin, not a kernel programmer or
> gcc maintainer or anything like that. I'd never state a kernel "ground
> truth"!

Fair enough.  I hope you don't mind that I trusted your review though.
Trust and verify, as they say.  What I saw when I took up Linux-libre
was so solid that after enough double- (triple-, I thought then)
checking, I came to believe it was correct.  And, despite this one
mistake, and your clarification, I still place a great deal of trust in
it, and would face a hard time challenging analyses from back then.


>> I'm now inclined to believe that leaving this file alone was one
>> of very few mistakes (perhaps the only one) made in the initial
>> cleaning-up,

> If I only made one mistake in the initial release, I was lucky!

... and modest, after doing such a superb job ;-D

Thank you very much!

-- 
Alexandre Oliva, happy hacker                https://FSFLA.org/blogs/lxo/
   Free Software Activist                       GNU Toolchain Engineer
Disinformation flourishes because many people care deeply about injustice
but very few check the facts.  Ask me about <https://stallmansupport.org>