Ubuntu DKMS Presentation

At the Ubuntu Kernel Sprint in Lexington, Mass. this week, I did a presentation on how to create a simple package which utilizes DKMS. For those that don't know, DKMS is a distribution agnostic way to deliver driver source that is not prone to breakage when the kernel ABI changes.

When a new kernel is installed or booted, the driver is actually rebuilt against it automatically.

This is a 20 minute presentation, complete with an example package. There is a video of the talk in OGG format. It will be uploaded to the Ubuntu Dev video channel soon (in case you don't want the 1.4G file I have).

Have fun, and please don't hesitate to ask any questions.

http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~bcollins/dkms-presentation/

NOTE: I am in the process of uploading the ogg, so be patient:

-rw-r--r-- 1 bcollins bcollins 1444484439 2008-07-16 15:29 dkms-presentation.ogg
94a9c16c6fdb2593a19737ae6f7b9aac  dkms-presentation.ogg

UPDATE: Here's a smaller file. I hope the quality is good enough to read the projector:

-rw-r--r-- 1 bcollins bcollins 246894559 2008-07-17 12:48 dkms-presentation-small.ogg
61248c1baf4f708e3b040361e977eee0  dkms-presentation-small.ogg

Canonical and the Linux kernel

There's been a lot of discussion recently about Canonical and it's contributions to upstream, mainly due to an off-the-cuff comment by GregKH on a google video, and mainly in relation to the Linux kernel. Greg's statement, while correct when compared to his data, was incorrect because of improper data collection.

Greg did some data gathering to show where kernel contributions come from, based on the history in the git logs, and associating email addresses of authors with companies.

During this presentation, Greg said that "Canonical does not give back to the community". While I could do pages about how this blanket comment is completely baseless, due to the fact that he is using one numeric value from one bit of history, I wont go into that now.

What I want to clarify are the numbers, since I can prove them with facts. I don't make any claims that this data means we do huge amounts of work, or that we compare favorably to other companies. I just want people to know that the numbers you heard are wrong. I also want people to realize that these numbers, while important, are not a good metric of how much a company such as Canonical, SuSe or even Redhat contribute back to the community on a whole. Just remember, Ubuntu is a community driven distribution. It's not something we put out to appease the developers and community, it's the heart and soul of everything we do.

So, to get some corrections out:

GregKH: "Canonical only contributed 6 patches in 5 years"

BenC: First off, Canonical hasn't even been around for 5 years, so expressing the numbers in this way leads to some incorrect conclusions. Second off, using a check for ^Author with a canonical.com or ubuntu.com email address in the v2.6.25 tag of the upstream kernel tree, shows 91 commits (I should know the numbers, since 63 of those were from me). Granted, Redhat and SuSe outnumber us considerably, but then we don't have > 100 kernel developers on staff (we have less than 10).

So how did Greg make this mistake? After talking with him it seems he was only checking for canonical.com addresses. It was only recently that we started using canonical.com as a habit for upstream work (we used to use ubuntu.com).

Seems people like to harp on numbers, as inconclusive as they are. All I can say is, take a step back and look at the bigger picture. We're all working toward the same end, and we all have our contributions.