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Subject: Re: [PATCH] scsi: target/sbp: remove firewire SBP target driver
To:     Finn Thain <fthain@telegraphics.com.au>
Cc:     Chris Boot <bootc@boo.tc>, linuxppc-dev@lists.ozlabs.org,
        target-devel@vger.kernel.org, linux-scsi@vger.kernel.org,
        linux1394-devel@lists.sourceforge.net,
        linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Chuhong Yuan <hslester96@gmail.com>,
        "Martin K . Petersen" <martin.petersen@oracle.com>,
        Nicholas Bellinger <nab@linux-iscsi.org>,
        Stefan Richter <stefanr@s5r6.in-berlin.de>
References: <01020172acd3d10f-3964f076-a820-43fc-9494-3f3946e9b7b5-000000@eu-west-1.amazonses.com>
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 <8da0c285-d707-a3d2-063e-472af5cc560f@boo.tc>
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 <8cbab988-fba7-8e27-7faf-9f7aa36ca235@acm.org>
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From:   Bart Van Assche <bvanassche@acm.org>
Message-ID: <9103b316-8848-2350-7c0d-b742c8d8c83c@acm.org>
Date:   Mon, 4 Jan 2021 17:48:06 -0800
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On 1/4/21 2:50 PM, Finn Thain wrote:
> On Mon, 4 Jan 2021, Bart Van Assche wrote:
>> Additionally, there is a good alternative available for the sbp driver. 
>> Every system I know of that is equipped with a Firewire port also has an 
>> Ethernet port. So users who want to provide SCSI target functionality on 
>> such systems can use any SCSI transport protocol that is compatible with 
>> Ethernet (iSCSI, iSER over soft-RoCE, SRP over soft-RoCE, ...).
> 
> Ethernet is not always an alternative. That was already discussed in this 
> thread. But let's assume for a moment that you can migrate any and all 
> users of this driver over to an ethernet driver.
> 
> Why would the maintainers of that Ethernet driver and its API accept that 
> plan, if adding users would extend their maintenance and testing 
> obligations? Do you think those maintainers should pay the "kind of tax 
> that all developers/users pay to all developers/users?"

Hi Finn,

I cannot speak in the name of the iSCSI over TCP/IP or iSER driver
maintainers. But since I maintain the SRP initiator and target kernel
drivers myself, I can state that I would be happy to help SBP target users
(if that driver has any users today) to switch from SCSI over Firewire to
SCSI over SRP over RoCE or even NVMEoF over TCP.

Thanks,

Bart.