It's worth reading one of the other comments in that thread, by the person who Linus is replying to:<p><a href="https://lkml.org/lkml/2011/6/14/192" rel="nofollow">https://lkml.org/lkml/2011/6/14/192</a><p>And/or a clarification someone else gave to Linus:<p><a href="https://lkml.org/lkml/2011/6/15/38" rel="nofollow">https://lkml.org/lkml/2011/6/15/38</a><p>The code in question is for parsing command-line arguments, and its goal is to determine if the user was specifying an (optional) kernel version. When the goal is to guess what a user is intending, you're inherently dependent on _name_ of the version, not its features. And, contrary to what Linus says, you care just as much about future versions as old ones.<p>So Linus's criticism is <i>almost entirely wrong</i>, for the actual use-case of the author of this request. There are other alternate criticisms, perhaps, and of course Linus's criticism does apply to most people who write "check this version" code.