2014-12-17 16:00:18

by John W. Linville

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: changes to Linux wireless maintenance

Greetings,

Almost 9 years ago, Jeff Garzik wrote a message on LKML detailing
the sad state of wireless LANs in the Linux world. The point of his
message was "So... there it is. We suck. There's hope. No Luke
Skywalker in sight.":

https://lkml.org/lkml/2006/1/5/671

Shortly thereafter, I became the maintainer for wireless LANs in the
Linux kernel:

https://lkml.org/lkml/2006/1/18/377

Since then, we have had a number of wireless summit meetings all around
the world. Items were discussed, patches were merged, and friendships
were made. Over time, we garnered support from a large range of
wireless networking vendors. Eventually even other technologies
were sending their patches through my trees, and I was consistently
ranked amongst the top 10 "gate keepers" for getting changes into the
Linux kernel. In fact, a couple of years ago I even gave a talk on
how Linux wireless got better. It has been quite a ride!

https://events.linuxfoundation.org/images/stories/pdf/lfcs2012_linville.pdf

Nevertheless, I think it is time for some changes. I have been
the wireless maintainer for a long time, and I personally would
like to develop in a different direction. Plus, I think that Linux
will benefit from having some fresh blood involved in more of the
maintenance duties. I will be stepping aside to let that happen.

The mac80211, bluetooth, and nfc trees have fed through me for some
time. I am now asking these trees to send pull request directly to
David Miller. Since these trees are managed through git, my hope is
that they will not place any significant burden on Dave.

As for the wireless driver patches, I have asked Kalle Valo
to handle patch review and merge duties for everything under the
drivers/net/wireless directory. This will now include not only the ath
patches he already manages, but other drivers that don't have trees
such as mwifiex, rt2x00, rtlwifi, and others. For consistency, the
iwlwifi tree will also be merged through Kalle's new tree. I expect
that Kalle will announce any relevant details in a follow-up message.

The wireless-testing tree is a resource that some people value.
I will continue to provide a wireless-testing tree. Now that tree
will feed from the various wireless trees managed by others, probably
with some sort of regularly scheduled pulls. Details are still to be
determined, but the tree will still exist and will be substantially
similar to how it has been so far.

I also receive notices of new bug reports for wireless LANs on
bugzilla.kernel.org. For now I will continue to triage those reports,
so don't ignore me!! :-)

Some may ask what I will do now -- I wish I had a specific answer.
Immediate plans are to enjoy the coming holidays and my traditional
year-end time away from work. After that...well, I'm sure I will
find something to do. If you have any suggestions for good uses of
my talents, feel free to contact me -- I'm not hard to find!

In closing, I hope everyone will support Kalle and the other wireless
maintainers at least as much as you have supported me for the past
several years. These are good, hard working folks. You are in
good hands!

Regards,

John

P.S. Bonus points for anyone that finds a way for me to become a
professional retro-computing hobbyist... :-)
--
John W. Linville Someday the world will need a hero, and you
[email protected] might be all we have. Be ready.


2014-12-17 18:15:48

by Rafał Miłecki

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: changes to Linux wireless maintenance

On 17 December 2014 at 16:59, John W. Linville <[email protected]> wrote:
> Nevertheless, I think it is time for some changes. I have been
> the wireless maintainer for a long time, and I personally would
> like to develop in a different direction. Plus, I think that Linux
> will benefit from having some fresh blood involved in more of the
> maintenance duties. I will be stepping aside to let that happen.

Thanks John for your work, help and patience over all these years.

Working with wireless was my first bigger kernel involvement and I'll
always remember it has really started there :)

Thank you!

--
Rafał

2014-12-18 20:03:33

by Luca Coelho

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: changes to Linux wireless maintenance

Hi John,

On Wed, 2014-12-17 at 10:59 -0500, John W. Linville wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> Almost 9 years ago, Jeff Garzik wrote a message on LKML detailing
> the sad state of wireless LANs in the Linux world. The point of his
> message was "So... there it is. We suck. There's hope. No Luke
> Skywalker in sight.":
>
> https://lkml.org/lkml/2006/1/5/671
>
> Shortly thereafter, I became the maintainer for wireless LANs in the
> Linux kernel:
>
> https://lkml.org/lkml/2006/1/18/377
>
> Since then, we have had a number of wireless summit meetings all around
> the world. Items were discussed, patches were merged, and friendships
> were made. Over time, we garnered support from a large range of
> wireless networking vendors. Eventually even other technologies
> were sending their patches through my trees, and I was consistently
> ranked amongst the top 10 "gate keepers" for getting changes into the
> Linux kernel. In fact, a couple of years ago I even gave a talk on
> how Linux wireless got better. It has been quite a ride!
>
> https://events.linuxfoundation.org/images/stories/pdf/lfcs2012_linville.pdf
>
> Nevertheless, I think it is time for some changes. I have been
> the wireless maintainer for a long time, and I personally would
> like to develop in a different direction. Plus, I think that Linux
> will benefit from having some fresh blood involved in more of the
> maintenance duties. I will be stepping aside to let that happen.

I'm coming a bit late, so I'll probably sound repetitive, but there's
just no way I could refrain from personally thanking you. John, you've
been a great maintainer, mentor, role-model and friend for many of us in
the wireless community. You've been a great friend personally, since
the first time we met personally, back in 2009, in Berlin. As others
already said, you've been the hero we needed and I'm pretty sure you'll
continue being the hero you are in other communities or wherever you
will be. Thank you so much, my friend! Hope to keep seeing you around!

--
Luca.


2014-12-17 16:42:31

by Larry Finger

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: changes to Linux wireless maintenance

On 12/17/2014 09:59 AM, John W. Linville wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> Almost 9 years ago, Jeff Garzik wrote a message on LKML detailing
> the sad state of wireless LANs in the Linux world. The point of his
> message was "So... there it is. We suck. There's hope. No Luke
> Skywalker in sight.":
>
> https://lkml.org/lkml/2006/1/5/671
>
> Shortly thereafter, I became the maintainer for wireless LANs in the
> Linux kernel:
>
> https://lkml.org/lkml/2006/1/18/377
>
> Since then, we have had a number of wireless summit meetings all around
> the world. Items were discussed, patches were merged, and friendships
> were made. Over time, we garnered support from a large range of
> wireless networking vendors. Eventually even other technologies
> were sending their patches through my trees, and I was consistently
> ranked amongst the top 10 "gate keepers" for getting changes into the
> Linux kernel. In fact, a couple of years ago I even gave a talk on
> how Linux wireless got better. It has been quite a ride!
>
> https://events.linuxfoundation.org/images/stories/pdf/lfcs2012_linville.pdf
>
> Nevertheless, I think it is time for some changes. I have been
> the wireless maintainer for a long time, and I personally would
> like to develop in a different direction. Plus, I think that Linux
> will benefit from having some fresh blood involved in more of the
> maintenance duties. I will be stepping aside to let that happen.
>
> The mac80211, bluetooth, and nfc trees have fed through me for some
> time. I am now asking these trees to send pull request directly to
> David Miller. Since these trees are managed through git, my hope is
> that they will not place any significant burden on Dave.
>
> As for the wireless driver patches, I have asked Kalle Valo
> to handle patch review and merge duties for everything under the
> drivers/net/wireless directory. This will now include not only the ath
> patches he already manages, but other drivers that don't have trees
> such as mwifiex, rt2x00, rtlwifi, and others. For consistency, the
> iwlwifi tree will also be merged through Kalle's new tree. I expect
> that Kalle will announce any relevant details in a follow-up message.
>
> The wireless-testing tree is a resource that some people value.
> I will continue to provide a wireless-testing tree. Now that tree
> will feed from the various wireless trees managed by others, probably
> with some sort of regularly scheduled pulls. Details are still to be
> determined, but the tree will still exist and will be substantially
> similar to how it has been so far.
>
> I also receive notices of new bug reports for wireless LANs on
> bugzilla.kernel.org. For now I will continue to triage those reports,
> so don't ignore me!! :-)
>
> Some may ask what I will do now -- I wish I had a specific answer.
> Immediate plans are to enjoy the coming holidays and my traditional
> year-end time away from work. After that...well, I'm sure I will
> find something to do. If you have any suggestions for good uses of
> my talents, feel free to contact me -- I'm not hard to find!
>
> In closing, I hope everyone will support Kalle and the other wireless
> maintainers at least as much as you have supported me for the past
> several years. These are good, hard working folks. You are in
> good hands!
>
> Regards,
>
> John
>
> P.S. Bonus points for anyone that finds a way for me to become a
> professional retro-computing hobbyist... :-)

John,

Many thanks for your service to the wireless community. Although some
individuals still consider Linux wireless to be a mess, you have had a major
impact on coordinating large-scale improvements. I hope you enjoy your new
endeavors as much as I have enjoyed my second career.

I look forward to working with Kalle.

Larry




2014-12-17 19:27:36

by Nick Kossifidis

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: changes to Linux wireless maintenance

Hello John !

It's been a long time since I committed anything on wireless-testing
but I'll never forget your support and guidance when we started ath5k,
the beautiful events you organized that brought this team together and
the fun we had. You are awesome man ! Enjoy Christmas with your family
and happy retro-hacking, all the best :-)

--
GPG ID: 0xEE878588
As you read this post global entropy rises. Have Fun ;-)
Nick

2014-12-18 15:13:33

by Sedat Dilek

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: changes to Linux wireless maintenance

On Wed, Dec 17, 2014 at 4:59 PM, John W. Linville
<[email protected]> wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> Almost 9 years ago, Jeff Garzik wrote a message on LKML detailing
> the sad state of wireless LANs in the Linux world. The point of his
> message was "So... there it is. We suck. There's hope. No Luke
> Skywalker in sight.":
>
> https://lkml.org/lkml/2006/1/5/671
>
> Shortly thereafter, I became the maintainer for wireless LANs in the
> Linux kernel:
>
> https://lkml.org/lkml/2006/1/18/377
>
...

Hmm, I remember testing the eraly iwlwifi stuff because I wanted that
damn bith running on my HP nc6400 notebook these days (iwl3945).

Following the wireless ML made a real fun for me and I will allways
associate "linux-wireless" with "John W. Linville".
So life is change, I had some hurtful/wretched experiences the last two years.
Anyway, thanks and my best wishes with any other projects :-).

> The mac80211, bluetooth, and nfc trees have fed through me for some
> time. I am now asking these trees to send pull request directly to
> David Miller. Since these trees are managed through git, my hope is
> that they will not place any significant burden on Dave.
>
> As for the wireless driver patches, I have asked Kalle Valo
> to handle patch review and merge duties for everything under the
> drivers/net/wireless directory. This will now include not only the ath
> patches he already manages, but other drivers that don't have trees
> such as mwifiex, rt2x00, rtlwifi, and others. For consistency, the
> iwlwifi tree will also be merged through Kalle's new tree. I expect
> that Kalle will announce any relevant details in a follow-up message.
>

Hmm, not sure why mac80211 stuff should not go via wireless trees?
If I remember testing early wireless stuff I pulled this order...

mac80211 -> wireless -> net (Git trees)

Can you explain why mac80211 separate from wireless stuff?

- Sedat -

2014-12-17 16:46:03

by Johannes Berg

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: changes to Linux wireless maintenance


> Nevertheless, I think it is time for some changes. I have been
> the wireless maintainer for a long time, and I personally would
> like to develop in a different direction. Plus, I think that Linux
> will benefit from having some fresh blood involved in more of the
> maintenance duties. I will be stepping aside to let that happen.

Thank you John for all the work you've put into wireless, from the
day-to-day grind of merging/bugs/etc. to organising meetings and looking
after people at conference nights (...)

Good luck with the retro-computing and whatever else you end up doing!

I guess we need to throw a party at netconf/netdev :)

johannes


2014-12-17 19:14:02

by Avinash Patil

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: RE: changes to Linux wireless maintenance

Hello John,

Thanks a lot for maintaining wireless tree! You have been of great help to us.
Wishing you all the best for your future endeavors!

Best regards,
Avinash.

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of John W. Linville
Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2014 9:30 PM
To: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]
Cc: David S. Miller; Kalle Valo; [email protected]
Subject: changes to Linux wireless maintenance

Greetings,

Almost 9 years ago, Jeff Garzik wrote a message on LKML detailing the sad state of wireless LANs in the Linux world. The point of his message was "So... there it is. We suck. There's hope. No Luke Skywalker in sight.":

https://lkml.org/lkml/2006/1/5/671

Shortly thereafter, I became the maintainer for wireless LANs in the Linux kernel:

https://lkml.org/lkml/2006/1/18/377

Since then, we have had a number of wireless summit meetings all around the world. Items were discussed, patches were merged, and friendships were made. Over time, we garnered support from a large range of wireless networking vendors. Eventually even other technologies were sending their patches through my trees, and I was consistently ranked amongst the top 10 "gate keepers" for getting changes into the Linux kernel. In fact, a couple of years ago I even gave a talk on
how Linux wireless got better. It has been quite a ride!

https://events.linuxfoundation.org/images/stories/pdf/lfcs2012_linville.pdf

Nevertheless, I think it is time for some changes. I have been the wireless maintainer for a long time, and I personally would like to develop in a different direction. Plus, I think that Linux will benefit from having some fresh blood involved in more of the maintenance duties. I will be stepping aside to let that happen.

The mac80211, bluetooth, and nfc trees have fed through me for some time. I am now asking these trees to send pull request directly to David Miller. Since these trees are managed through git, my hope is that they will not place any significant burden on Dave.

As for the wireless driver patches, I have asked Kalle Valo to handle patch review and merge duties for everything under the drivers/net/wireless directory. This will now include not only the ath patches he already manages, but other drivers that don't have trees such as mwifiex, rt2x00, rtlwifi, and others. For consistency, the iwlwifi tree will also be merged through Kalle's new tree. I expect that Kalle will announce any relevant details in a follow-up message.

The wireless-testing tree is a resource that some people value.
I will continue to provide a wireless-testing tree. Now that tree will feed from the various wireless trees managed by others, probably with some sort of regularly scheduled pulls. Details are still to be determined, but the tree will still exist and will be substantially similar to how it has been so far.

I also receive notices of new bug reports for wireless LANs on bugzilla.kernel.org. For now I will continue to triage those reports, so don't ignore me!! :-)

Some may ask what I will do now -- I wish I had a specific answer.
Immediate plans are to enjoy the coming holidays and my traditional year-end time away from work. After that...well, I'm sure I will find something to do. If you have any suggestions for good uses of my talents, feel free to contact me -- I'm not hard to find!

In closing, I hope everyone will support Kalle and the other wireless maintainers at least as much as you have supported me for the past
several years. These are good, hard working folks. You are in
good hands!

Regards,

John

P.S. Bonus points for anyone that finds a way for me to become a professional retro-computing hobbyist... :-)
--
John W. Linville Someday the world will need a hero, and you
[email protected] might be all we have. Be ready.

2014-12-17 16:20:25

by Marcel Holtmann

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: changes to Linux wireless maintenance

Hi John,

> Almost 9 years ago, Jeff Garzik wrote a message on LKML detailing
> the sad state of wireless LANs in the Linux world. The point of his
> message was "So... there it is. We suck. There's hope. No Luke
> Skywalker in sight.":
>
> https://lkml.org/lkml/2006/1/5/671
>
> Shortly thereafter, I became the maintainer for wireless LANs in the
> Linux kernel:
>
> https://lkml.org/lkml/2006/1/18/377
>
> Since then, we have had a number of wireless summit meetings all around
> the world. Items were discussed, patches were merged, and friendships
> were made. Over time, we garnered support from a large range of
> wireless networking vendors. Eventually even other technologies
> were sending their patches through my trees, and I was consistently
> ranked amongst the top 10 "gate keepers" for getting changes into the
> Linux kernel. In fact, a couple of years ago I even gave a talk on
> how Linux wireless got better. It has been quite a ride!
>
> https://events.linuxfoundation.org/images/stories/pdf/lfcs2012_linville.pdf
>
> Nevertheless, I think it is time for some changes. I have been
> the wireless maintainer for a long time, and I personally would
> like to develop in a different direction. Plus, I think that Linux
> will benefit from having some fresh blood involved in more of the
> maintenance duties. I will be stepping aside to let that happen.
>
> The mac80211, bluetooth, and nfc trees have fed through me for some
> time. I am now asking these trees to send pull request directly to
> David Miller. Since these trees are managed through git, my hope is
> that they will not place any significant burden on Dave.

it has been a pleasure merging Bluetooth (and lately IEEE 802.15.4 and 6LoWPAN) patches through the Wireless tree. Thank you so much for all your hard work in making it easy for the sub-subsystem maintainers. Hope you find some new fun stuff to work on.

Regards

Marcel


2014-12-18 15:31:14

by Dan Williams

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: changes to Linux wireless maintenance

On Wed, 2014-12-17 at 10:59 -0500, John W. Linville wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> Almost 9 years ago, Jeff Garzik wrote a message on LKML detailing
> the sad state of wireless LANs in the Linux world. The point of his
> message was "So... there it is. We suck. There's hope. No Luke
> Skywalker in sight.":
>
> https://lkml.org/lkml/2006/1/5/671
>
> Shortly thereafter, I became the maintainer for wireless LANs in the
> Linux kernel:
>
> https://lkml.org/lkml/2006/1/18/377
>
> Since then, we have had a number of wireless summit meetings all around
> the world. Items were discussed, patches were merged, and friendships
> were made. Over time, we garnered support from a large range of
> wireless networking vendors. Eventually even other technologies
> were sending their patches through my trees, and I was consistently
> ranked amongst the top 10 "gate keepers" for getting changes into the
> Linux kernel. In fact, a couple of years ago I even gave a talk on
> how Linux wireless got better. It has been quite a ride!
>
> https://events.linuxfoundation.org/images/stories/pdf/lfcs2012_linville.pdf
>
> Nevertheless, I think it is time for some changes. I have been
> the wireless maintainer for a long time, and I personally would
> like to develop in a different direction. Plus, I think that Linux
> will benefit from having some fresh blood involved in more of the
> maintenance duties. I will be stepping aside to let that happen.

Thanks John! It's been a great ride and you're a huge part of the
reason wireless happened. Nobody can thank you enough!

Dan

> The mac80211, bluetooth, and nfc trees have fed through me for some
> time. I am now asking these trees to send pull request directly to
> David Miller. Since these trees are managed through git, my hope is
> that they will not place any significant burden on Dave.
>
> As for the wireless driver patches, I have asked Kalle Valo
> to handle patch review and merge duties for everything under the
> drivers/net/wireless directory. This will now include not only the ath
> patches he already manages, but other drivers that don't have trees
> such as mwifiex, rt2x00, rtlwifi, and others. For consistency, the
> iwlwifi tree will also be merged through Kalle's new tree. I expect
> that Kalle will announce any relevant details in a follow-up message.
>
> The wireless-testing tree is a resource that some people value.
> I will continue to provide a wireless-testing tree. Now that tree
> will feed from the various wireless trees managed by others, probably
> with some sort of regularly scheduled pulls. Details are still to be
> determined, but the tree will still exist and will be substantially
> similar to how it has been so far.
>
> I also receive notices of new bug reports for wireless LANs on
> bugzilla.kernel.org. For now I will continue to triage those reports,
> so don't ignore me!! :-)
>
> Some may ask what I will do now -- I wish I had a specific answer.
> Immediate plans are to enjoy the coming holidays and my traditional
> year-end time away from work. After that...well, I'm sure I will
> find something to do. If you have any suggestions for good uses of
> my talents, feel free to contact me -- I'm not hard to find!
>
> In closing, I hope everyone will support Kalle and the other wireless
> maintainers at least as much as you have supported me for the past
> several years. These are good, hard working folks. You are in
> good hands!
>
> Regards,
>
> John
>
> P.S. Bonus points for anyone that finds a way for me to become a
> professional retro-computing hobbyist... :-)