Return-path: Received: from mail-gy0-f174.google.com ([209.85.160.174]:51884 "EHLO mail-gy0-f174.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751282Ab1IUOjv (ORCPT ); Wed, 21 Sep 2011 10:39:51 -0400 Received: by gyg10 with SMTP id 10so1178054gyg.19 for ; Wed, 21 Sep 2011 07:39:51 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <4E79F733.1040907@lwfinger.net> (sfid-20110921_163957_694298_5F2BA5A2) Date: Wed, 21 Sep 2011 09:39:47 -0500 From: Larry Finger MIME-Version: 1.0 To: =?UTF-8?B?UmFmYcWCIE1pxYJlY2tp?= CC: "John W. Linville" , Johannes Berg , Greg KH , Franky Lin , gregkh@suse.de, devel@linuxdriverproject.org, linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [PATCH 00/20] staging: brcm80211: 7th reaction for mainline patch #2 References: <1316467568-27683-1-git-send-email-frankyl@broadcom.com> <20110920130338.GA9885@kroah.com> <1316524874.3953.41.camel@jlt3.sipsolutions.net> <20110921134056.GB2828@tuxdriver.com> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Sender: linux-wireless-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On 09/21/2011 08:55 AM, Rafał Miłecki wrote: > W dniu 21 września 2011 15:52 użytkownik Rafał Miłecki > napisał: >> W dniu 21 września 2011 15:40 użytkownik John W. Linville >> napisał: >>> >>> Their new firmware doesn't run on the older hardware, no? >> >> AFAIK it does (unless you mean hardware covered by b43legacy). >> >> If you take a look at 666.2 firmware, it's still available for core 5 >> (and 9, 13, etc.) > > The reason I've added support for new firmware without dropping > support for older, was users experience. I didn't want to leave anyone > with b43 not working after kernel update (without firmware update). That is the correct thing to do. As I see it, this firmware change is a lot less intrusive than the changes that led to the b43/b43legacy split, where keeping the old version working took a lot of bookkeeping. Perhaps in 2 or 3 years, we might want to deprecate the older firmware and force users to go to the newest style, but there is no rush. Larry