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Subject: Re: Driver for RealTek RTL8811AU dual-band USB WiFi adapter
To:     tjcw@cantab.net, linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org
References: <fed00b53-2468-55ea-fa98-0a324a469075@gmail.com>
From:   Larry Finger <Larry.Finger@lwfinger.net>
Message-ID: <211805b1-7f4a-59ea-508a-3c56ef7f0803@lwfinger.net>
Date:   Sun, 4 Nov 2018 10:52:43 -0600
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On 11/4/18 9:43 AM, Chris Ward wrote:
> I recently bought one of these 
> https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07C4JQZSP/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1 
> ;
> a dual-band wifi adapter. It came with source for a Linux driver, which required 
> some patching to get it to work with the
> 4.19 kernel. Can I interest a kernel developer to integrate this into kernel.org 
> ? It would save me
> effort at further patching if someone else kept it current as the kernel changes.
> 
> The driver from Amazon is here 
> https://drive.google.com/open?id=1AYmjFk2l5jTpnAzLPNpetSGefm4khEBi
> and my patch is here http://tjcw.freeshell.org/Patches/rawhide-20181031.patch .
> 
> The Amazon driver is stated to be GPL, and I am content for my work to be GPL also.
> 
> If you need further information, please email me (tjcw at cantab.net)

Even though the driver is GPL, it would take roughly 6 months for an experienced 
kernel coder to rewrite the crappy code that Realtek provides, particularly for 
its USB devices, to get it into a form that would be accepted into the kernel. 
If you are offering $10K for the project, you might get some interest. :)

As I offer a number of USB drivers for Realtek USB devices at GitHub, and I keep 
them patched for changes in the kernel API, I might consider adding this one to 
the collection there. It would be useful if someone would provide me with a 
sample device. Without that, I would rely on remote testing. A quick look at 
your patches indicate that you are destroying the ability to build the driver on 
earlier kernels. That is what is done for in-kernel code, but for an external 
driver one needs to keep a lot of flexibility.

Larry