Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1752610AbZJZRqQ (ORCPT ); Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:46:16 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1752045AbZJZRqP (ORCPT ); Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:46:15 -0400 Received: from charlotte.tuxdriver.com ([70.61.120.58]:41103 "EHLO smtp.tuxdriver.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751939AbZJZRqN (ORCPT ); Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:46:13 -0400 Date: Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:43:17 -0400 From: "John W. Linville" To: david@lang.hm Cc: Pavel Machek , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, gregkh@suse.de Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/4] strip: move driver to staging Message-ID: <20091026174317.GG2792@tuxdriver.com> References: <1256015830-12700-1-git-send-email-linville@tuxdriver.com> <20091023161006.GA1580@ucw.cz> <20091026165518.GE2792@tuxdriver.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.19 (2009-01-05) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1781 Lines: 45 On Mon, Oct 26, 2009 at 10:18:20AM -0700, david@lang.hm wrote: > On Mon, 26 Oct 2009, John W. Linville wrote: >> "ongoing maintenance for no clear benefit" -- that is what is wrong >> with it. > > supporting existing hardware is no longer a 'clear benifit'? Do you own or have access to such hardware? If the hardware is obsolete, unused, and mostly non-existant then what is the benefit to maintaining a driver that is rotting? > is this driver broken (as in not working)? I have no idea. I suspect that you don't know either. > other than the fact that you don't think many people have this hardware, > is there anything wrong with this driver? It sits there, bloating the target area for API maintenance and providing a likely broken example of how to write Linux drivers. > if this driver hasn't been changed other than for blanket API changes, > how is it causing significant problems? It is a distraction for no clear (or even murky) benefit, one more thing to keep compiling. > if someone were to claim 'maintainership' and then do nothing other than > complain if someone else were to change an API but not fix this in the > process, how would this be different than the current situation? Not much different, possibly worse if they created a bigger distraction. But if they actually had the hardware we might at least be confident that the effort was in some way worthwhile... John -- John W. Linville Someday the world will need a hero, and you linville@tuxdriver.com might be all we have. Be ready. -- 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/