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From:   Phillip Potter <phil@philpotter.co.uk>
Date:   Thu, 22 Jul 2021 11:44:10 +0100
Message-ID: <CAA=Fs0nvhxEhJhCTWH_KkYyB3Jz7Pi-t2a+6zL3K=O-_3-sLGg@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH resend] staging: rtl8188eu: move all source files from
 core subdirectory
To:     Larry Finger <Larry.Finger@lwfinger.net>
Cc:     Dan Carpenter <dan.carpenter@oracle.com>,
        Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>,
        Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
        linux-staging@lists.linux.dev, Fabio Aiuto <fabioaiuto83@gmail.com>
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On Wed, 21 Jul 2021 at 20:18, Larry Finger <Larry.Finger@lwfinger.net> wrote:
>
> On 7/21/21 1:28 PM, Dan Carpenter wrote:
> > You're obviously not a Realtek employee, but what are they doing for
> > wireless drivers these days?
>
> You are correct in that I am not a Realtek employee, nor do I have any knowledge
> of the internals of any of their chips. I do have a close working arrangement
> with the head of their PCI driver development, and I have gotten free samples of
> some of their chips. I am a volunteer that is interested in providing drivers
> for the devices in new laptops with wireless chips that do not yet have a Linux
> driver in the kernel. I also provide relatively modern drivers for older USB
> devices through GitHub repos.
>
>  From what I know, the PCI group at Realtek is mainly working on new 802.11ac
> devices, but are leaving some hooks for the USB and SDIO equivalents of those
> chips (RTL8822BE, RTL8822CE, RTL8821CE, RTL8723DE, and RTL8852AE). These drivers
> are either in the drivers/net/wireless tree of the kernel, or are under review
> for such inclusion.
>
> I have no current contact with the USB part of their driver development.
>
> Larry
>
>
Dear Larry,

Thank you for this info, it's very useful. Are you saying that in its
current state the GitHub driver would not even be accepted into
staging in your opinion? I am happy to continue improving it, but in
my mind this should probably be done publicly, within the kernel tree.
Not sure what others think but if there is general consensus then I
can submit this new version to staging and integrate within build
framework etc, then we can start improving it and getting it ready to
move beyond that. Sounds like your driver is further along the path,
and we should be using it, but I'm interested in what others think of
course.

Regards,
Phil