Date:   Tue, 14 Mar 2023 23:11:58 +0000
From:   "Russell King (Oracle)" <linux@armlinux.org.uk>
To:     Vladimir Oltean <vladimir.oltean@nxp.com>
Cc:     =?utf-8?B?QXLEsW7DpyDDnE5BTA==?= <arinc.unal@arinc9.com>,
        Daniel Golle <daniel@makrotopia.org>, netdev@vger.kernel.org,
        linux-mediatek@lists.infradead.org,
        linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
        Heiner Kallweit <hkallweit1@gmail.com>,
        Lorenzo Bianconi <lorenzo@kernel.org>,
        Mark Lee <Mark-MC.Lee@mediatek.com>,
        John Crispin <john@phrozen.org>, Felix Fietkau <nbd@nbd.name>,
        AngeloGioacchino Del Regno 
        <angelogioacchino.delregno@collabora.com>,
        Matthias Brugger <matthias.bgg@gmail.com>,
        DENG Qingfang <dqfext@gmail.com>,
        Landen Chao <Landen.Chao@mediatek.com>,
        Sean Wang <sean.wang@mediatek.com>,
        Paolo Abeni <pabeni@redhat.com>,
        Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>,
        Eric Dumazet <edumazet@google.com>,
        "David S. Miller" <davem@davemloft.net>,
        Vladimir Oltean <olteanv@gmail.com>,
        Florian Fainelli <f.fainelli@gmail.com>,
        Andrew Lunn <andrew@lunn.ch>,
        =?iso-8859-1?Q?Bj=F8rn?= Mork <bjorn@mork.no>,
        Frank Wunderlich <frank-w@public-files.de>,
        Alexander Couzens <lynxis@fe80.eu>
Subject: Re: [PATCH net-next v13 11/16] net: dsa: mt7530: use external PCS
 driver
Message-ID: <ZBD/PrMM7vxae5gY@shell.armlinux.org.uk>
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On Wed, Mar 15, 2023 at 12:34:13AM +0200, Vladimir Oltean wrote:
> But the mt7530 maintainers have gone
> pretty silent as of late, and I, as a fallback maintainer with no
> hardware, have had to send 2 bug fixes to the mt7530 and 1 to the
> mtk_eth_soc driver in the past month, to address the reports.

That's an under-statement, and not just the DSA driver, but the
ethernet driver too. It's been years trying to get the attention
of anyone to sort out the pre-March 2020 crud in this driver, and
no one seems to care, and none of the alleged maintainers bother
replying.

I don't believe anyone who claims to be a maintainer for either the
DSA or Ethernet driver has commented on any of my patches or provided
any review.

In my mind, these drivers do not have maintainers.

What I have to resort to is spotting potential victims^wtesters on
the mailing lists to try stuff out for me - which is really not
how this should work.

It seems to me that this is the old "chuck code over the wall into
mainline, then do a runner" approach to kernel maintenance.

So, honestly, the sooner these drivers get proper maintainers, the
better - and if someone wants to step up to do that amongst those
who are involved in the current work, I'm all for that - it would
be a hell of a lot better than the current situation.

-- 
RMK's Patch system: https://www.armlinux.org.uk/developer/patches/
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