On Wed, Jan 18, 2017 at 5:18 AM, Hans de Goede <hdegoede@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Hi, > > > On 17-01-17 21:59, Laura Abbott wrote: >> >> On 01/17/2017 05:19 AM, Hans de Goede wrote: >>> >>> Hi, >>> >>> On 17-01-17 14:12, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote: >>>> >>>> Lo! Three quick question from someone who for some strange reason is >>>> interested in this topic: >>>> >>>> Hans de Goede wrote on 17.01.2017 13:11: >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> As such I would like to (for starters) add this driver: >>>>> https://github.com/hadess/rtl8723bs >>>>> >>>>> Which is fully open source and although not ready for >>>>> upstream, actively maintained by the community, to the >>>>> driver/staging directory of the Fedora kernel pkg. >>>> >>>> >>>> * wouldn't it make more sense to simply add the driver to the staging >>>> directory upstream? >>> >>> >>> See my answer to Bastien's mail. >>> >>>> * will users somehow made aware they are using drivers of lower quality >>>> which are maintained differently (they for example might vanish suddenly >>>> if maintainers lose interest, which normally doesn't happen with proper >>>> kernel drivers) >>> >>> >>> Other then the standard tainting caused by this being in staging, no. >>> >>>> * while at it: Is https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/KernelStagingPolicy >>>> still considered policy or is it a page everyone forgot about? >>> >>> >>> I for one had never heard about that page. >>> >>> Regards, >>> >>> Hans >> >> >> >> Yes, that page should still be accurate wrt to staging policy although >> I think the list of drivers might need to be updated. >> >> In general, I think upstreaming is the right approach to take and >> if you are willing to go through staging, I think that could be >> a good path to work to get the driver out of staging. > > > I've the feeling this whole discussion has been derailed a bit > by focusing too much on the rtl8723bs example. > > Quoting from my original mail, upstreaming was given as > one possible solution: > > "d) Get the driver upstreamed. Unfortunately many of > these drivers are vendor code, which often is ported > windows code with lots of ugly glue; and the effort to > get this upstream will take more time then I have > to invest into this. Also if this were easy it would > have been done by now, there are quite a few people > interested in this." > > Nothing has changed wrt this, to be specific I would like > to see the following wifi drivers be available in Fedora > kernels: > > rtl8723bs > rtl8189es > rtl8189fs > esp8089 > xradio > > And in the future possible others (rda599x comes to mind) > and I simply do not have the bandwidth to get 1 one of > these let alone all of these into staging, let alone > fully mainlined. > > Currently we're crippling our user experience by refusing > to ship drivers support this hardware even though there are > fully open drivers to support these. Hans, I think you need to take a deep breath. You seem to have come to this discussion with fully loaded guns blazing. Nobody has refused your request. There's been a discussion about the best way to get it upstream. Nobody has said no. Also, I understand your argumentation about user experience but this is the first I've heard of this issue and I couldn't find any reports of this in bugzilla. While it isn't relevant to the decision to add the drivers, I do wonder how many users we have of such hardware. It seems we aren't crippling user experience as much as we would be making it possible to use the hardware in the first place. That could certainly be a good thing. > Again quoting from my original email: > > "I also believe that this rule goes against Fedora's > basic principles: > > -It goes against the First principle, many other distros > are shipping with this driver > -It goes against the Features principle, disallowing > people to have working wifi is a mis-Feature > -It goes against the Freedom principle, if a contributor > is willing to spend time to maintain such a driver > he/she should have the freedom to do so" Principles are good to have and provide guidance on how one should act when possible. Sometimes they're out-weighed by reality though. I mean, if we were to take them literally for every single issue, we'd be supporting armv5, armv6, sparc, mips, mips64, etc etc. That's not hyperbole either. Users have requested all of those. The team simply doesn't have the resources to do them all. I know you know this, so throwing principles in the Fedora kernel team's face seems a little preachy just for the sake of getting what you want. > And I still end up at my original unanswered question: > > "All I'm asking from the fedora kernel team is permission > to add the driver." I believe you also offered to maintain it, yes? I have no say in this decision, but that's going to be a key detail. josh _______________________________________________ kernel mailing list -- kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to kernel-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
