You Say “Fragmentation”, I Say “Differentiation”
 

Funny how the use of an (in)appropriately-loaded word can make a good thing
sound bad <http://lwn.net/Articles/403022/>:

Linus noted that he has often been surprised at how others have used
Linux for things which do not interest him personally at all. For
example, he always found the server market to be a boring place, but
others went for it and made Linux successful in that area. That, he
says, is one of the key strengths of Linux: no one company is interested
in all of the possible uses of the system. That means that nobody bears
the sole responsibility of maintaining the kernel for all uses. And
Linus, in particular, really only needs to concern himself with making
sure that all of the pieces come together well. The application of a
single kernel to a wide range of use cases is something which has never
worked well in more controlled environments.

From there, Jim asked about the threat of fragmentation and whether it
continues to make sense to have a single kernel which is applicable to
such a wide range of tasks. Might there come a point where different
versions of the kernel need to go their separate ways?

According to Linus, we are doing very well with a single kernel; he
would hate to see it fragment. There are just too many problems which
are applicable in all domains. So, for example, people putting Linux
into phones care a lot about power management, but it turns out that
server users care a lot too. In general, people in different areas of
use tend to care about the same things, they just don't always care at
the same time. Symmetric multiprocessing was once only of interest to
high-end server applications; now it is difficult to buy a desktop which
does not need SMP support, and multicore processors are moving into
phones as well. Therein lies the beauty of the single kernel approach:
when phone users need SMP support, Linux is there waiting for them.

In other words, underestimate the synergies of a variety of applications of
a common code base at your peril.

Re: You Say “Fragmentation”, I Say “Differentiation”
 

In message <i8di00$ghq$1@lust.ihug.co.nz>, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

> You Say “Fragmentation”, I Say “Differentiation”
>
> Funny how the use of an (in)appropriately-loaded word can make a good thing
> sound bad

There are no double standards from Lawrence D'Oliveiro… Yeah, right…

In message <emqhhc$beq$1@lust.ihug.co.nz>, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

> the market is going to be fragmented among half a dozen
> versions of Vista, with two (count 'em) different certification levels,
> plus two different architectural levels (32-bit versus 64-bit)

Re: You Say ?Fragmentation?, I Say ?Differentiation?
 

On 2010-10-05, Lawrence D'Oublespeak <ldo@crok-central.gen.new_zealand> wrote:
> In message <i8di00$ghq$1@lust.ihug.co.nz>, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>
>> You Say ?Fragmentation?, I Say ?Differentiation?
>>
>> Funny how the use of an (in)appropriately-loaded word can make a good thing
>> sound bad
>
> There are no double standards from Lawrence D'Oliveiro? Yeah, right?
>
> In message <emqhhc$beq$1@lust.ihug.co.nz>, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>
>> the market is going to be fragmented among half a dozen
>> versions of Vista, with two (count 'em) different certification levels,
>> plus two different architectural levels (32-bit versus 64-bit)
>
>
Point is that the human Lawrence was discussing the article he refered to.
The terms of reference have been taken way out of field by your response.