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As an example for Linus' "kernel changes should not break user programs" policy, he was famous for using harsh words to pass the message to those who tired to steer otherwise (these words I don't have to repeat, so I'll just quote his main message):

https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75

"How long have you been a maintainer? And you still haven't learnt the first rule of kernel maintenance?

If a change results in user programs breaking, it's a bug in the kernel. We never EVER blame the user programs."



To explain that a bit, a Linux kernel maintainer is somebody who organizes and collects contributions of others, screens them, and when they are finished, passes them on to Linus to integrate them. That's a huge responsibility, and Linus uses such strong expressions only for people who have such responsibility and which do things which would harm his project. It is not the case that he talks like that to normal contributors (which should be guided by the maintainers).




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