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From: Kalle Valo <kvalo@kernel.org>
To: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Hector Martin <marcan@marcan.st>,  Daniel Berlin <dberlin@dberlin.org>,
  Arend van Spriel <arend.vanspriel@broadcom.com>,  Arend van Spriel
 <aspriel@gmail.com>,  Franky Lin <franky.lin@broadcom.com>,  Hante
 Meuleman <hante.meuleman@broadcom.com>,  SHA-cyfmac-dev-list@infineon.com,
  asahi@lists.linux.dev,  brcm80211-dev-list.pdl@broadcom.com,
  linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,  linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org,  David
 Airlie <airlied@redhat.com>,  Daniel Vetter <daniel@ffwll.ch>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] wifi: brcmfmac: cfg80211: Use WSEC to set SAE password
References: <20231107-brcmfmac-wpa3-v1-1-4c7db8636680@marcan.st>
	<170281231651.2255653.7498073085103487666.kvalo@kernel.org>
	<18c80d15e30.279b.9b12b7fc0a3841636cfb5e919b41b954@broadcom.com>
	<1b51997f-2994-46e8-ac58-90106d1c486d@marcan.st>
	<c392f901-789a-42e2-8cf7-5e246365a1ca@broadcom.com>
	<CAF4BwTXNtu30DAgBXo4auDaDK0iWc9Ch8f=EH+facQ-_F-oMUQ@mail.gmail.com>
	<87r0jiqmnx.fsf@kernel.org>
	<01bd8c68-1b9c-49b2-8ace-1c7d1b5192ad@marcan.st>
	<CAHk-=whDLKZZEuxU_jEhZRdeWjXAkL8=J_JRk2Ar6wp9UK3h2w@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2023 12:20:39 +0200
In-Reply-To: <CAHk-=whDLKZZEuxU_jEhZRdeWjXAkL8=J_JRk2Ar6wp9UK3h2w@mail.gmail.com>
	(Linus Torvalds's message of "Tue, 19 Dec 2023 17:44:18 -0800")
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Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> writes:

>> Just recently a patch was posted to remove the Infineon list from
>> MAINTAINERS because that company cares so little they have literally
>> stopped accepting emails from us. Meanwhile they are telling their
>> customers that they do not recommend upstream brcmfmac and they should
>> use their downstream driver [1].
>
> Unquestionably broadcom is not helping maintain things, and I think it
> should matter.
>
> As Hector says, they point to their random driver dumps on their site
> that you can't even download unless you are a "Broadcom community
> member" or whatever, and hey - any company that works that way should
> be seen as pretty much hostile to any actual maintenance and proper
> development.

Sadly this is the normal in the wireless world. All vendors focus on the
latest generation, currently it's Wi-Fi 7, and lose interest on older
generations. And vendors lose focus on the upstream drivers even faster,
usually after a customer project ends.

So in practise what we try to do is keep the drivers working somehow on
our own, even after the vendors are long gone. If we would deliberately
allow breaking drivers because vendor/corporations don't support us, I
suspect we would have sevaral broken drivers in upstream.

> If Daniel and Hector are responsive to actual problem reports for the
> changes they cause, I do think that should count a lot.

Sure, but they could also respect to the review comments. I find Arend's
proposal is reasonable and that's what I would implement in v2. We
(linux-wireless) make abstractions to workaround firmware problems or
interface conflicts all the time, just look at ath10k for example. I
would not be surprised if we need to add even more abstractions to
brcmfmac in the future. And Arend is the expert here, he has best
knowledge of Broadcom devices and I trust him.

Has anyone even investigated what it would need to implement Arend's
proposal? At least I don't see any indication of that.

-- 
https://patchwork.kernel.org/project/linux-wireless/list/

https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/developers/documentation/submittingpatches