A thin line
> But if it's something that has never worked, even if it ‘fixes’ some behavior, then it's new development,
I can understand the thinking behind this, but the question of whether something is a "fix" or "new" depends on what you consider to be the baseline functionality.
Torvalds' view seems to be that the definition of what Linux should do is held in the body of code that (used to work). That the code defines the functionality.
A more professional approach is that the design documents define the functionality and a deviation of the code, from the documentation, is a bug.
Now I realise that a lot of hacker-style amateur coders will already be rolling around on the floor, laughing at the idea of documentation. And even more so at the suggestion that it should be telling them what their software should do - rather than being a description of what it actually does. However, that is the reason we have standards. To define what software should do, in order for it to work with compliant systems that other people have developed.
One could therefore argue against Torvalds' opinion and say that lack of standards compliance - and design documents set those standards - is as much a bug as broken functionality that used to work. Although that does rather assume that Linux has some design documents in the first place!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
