Return-path: Received: from mail-iy0-f174.google.com ([209.85.210.174]:61517 "EHLO mail-iy0-f174.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750965Ab1IUX0f convert rfc822-to-8bit (ORCPT ); Wed, 21 Sep 2011 19:26:35 -0400 Received: by iaqq3 with SMTP id q3so2174437iaq.19 for ; Wed, 21 Sep 2011 16:26:35 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: References: <1316467568-27683-1-git-send-email-frankyl@broadcom.com> <20110920130338.GA9885@kroah.com> <1316524874.3953.41.camel@jlt3.sipsolutions.net> From: "Luis R. Rodriguez" Date: Wed, 21 Sep 2011 16:26:15 -0700 Message-ID: (sfid-20110922_012642_647137_92FE8CC8) Subject: Re: [PATCH 00/20] staging: brcm80211: 7th reaction for mainline patch #2 To: Alex Deucher Cc: =?UTF-8?B?UmFmYcWCIE1pxYJlY2tp?= , Johannes Berg , gregkh@suse.de, linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org, devel@linuxdriverproject.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Sender: linux-wireless-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: 2011/9/20 Alex Deucher : > 2011/9/20 Rafał Miłecki : >> 2011/9/20 Johannes Berg : >>> On Tue, 2011-09-20 at 06:03 -0700, Greg KH wrote: >>> >>>> And while code is great and nice, I still haven't seen any real answers >>>> to all of the questions that were asked of the Broadcom driver team >>>> during that review by the linux-wireless developers about how things >>>> will be handled properly due to the overlap in functionality with the >>>> existing "real" driver in the tree. >>> >>> Let's qualify this to "some developers". >>> >>> One thing I'd like to point out is that the Broadcom's firmware API has >>> always undergone changes over time. I'm actually surprised that b43 >>> works as well as it does (which, tbh, isn't very well at all, at least >>> for me with some 11n PHY). I also don't think that Broadcom are going to >>> maintain compatibility and/or maintain new firmware features for old >>> devices, that just doesn't make any sense. >> >> Actually, when we got some single response from Broadcom about their >> relation to b43, they haven't mentioned support for old HW is any >> problem at all. > > If you look at it from the perspective of a hardware manufacturer, > supporting EOLed chips is generally not a good return on investment. > There is no new revenue associated with them so any work that goes > into them stands to return very little. Support is one thing, the other is to enable the community. The later can be done while real support goes into the newer chipsets. Luis