Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1763418Ab3ECUBl (ORCPT ); Fri, 3 May 2013 16:01:41 -0400 Received: from mail-yh0-f43.google.com ([209.85.213.43]:41920 "EHLO mail-yh0-f43.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750729Ab3ECUBi (ORCPT ); Fri, 3 May 2013 16:01:38 -0400 Message-ID: <5184179D.5050407@pobox.com> Date: Fri, 03 May 2013 16:01:33 -0400 From: Jeff Garzik User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:17.0) Gecko/20130311 Thunderbird/17.0.4 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Linux IDE mailing list CC: LKML , Linus Torvalds , Tejun Heo Subject: libata maintainership change Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1816 Lines: 41 Linux has really found its groove. When I first got involved in Linux, there was no PCI API (now called the hotplug or device API), and patch submission was a moderately painful process of throwing spaghetti at a wall: sending and resending, with both Linus and maintainers having to manually resolve merge conflicts. It was a real fight to get any Linux hardware support at all. The vast amount of hardware documentation was locked away or simply unavailable. Working on memory management or filesystems or scheduling was always the Sexy Rock Star PhD work that attracted engineers. OTOH, I felt, device drivers were ignored as boring, unsexy grunt work. Which, ok, maybe it was. Each new device driver, though, spread Linux to more and greater locales. Alan Cox and Don Becker did enormous heavy lifting back then. Now Linux is where it is today, with most hardware vendors actively seeking open source driver support (except NVIDIA, natch). The kernel has come a long way. Time for new open source pastures outside the kernel, for me. SATA is slowly getting unexciting to the world. Which, really, just means the brand new technology has reached a usable plateau. :) And maybe in a few years, with directly attached PCI-NextGenSuperFastExpress storage, ATA and SCSI will be distant memories. Until such time as block-based storage disappears from this earth, the brave Sir Tejun, basically the libata co-author at this point, has agreed to be a target for slings and arrows known as libata patches. All the best, Jeff -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/