On 12/17/2014 09:59 AM, John W. Linville wrote:
Greetings,
Almost 9 years ago, Jeff Garzik wrote a message on LKML detailing
the sad state of wireless LANs in the Linux world. The point of his
message was "So... there it is. We suck. There's hope. No Luke
Skywalker in sight.":
https://lkml.org/lkml/2006/1/5/671
Shortly thereafter, I became the maintainer for wireless LANs in the
Linux kernel:
https://lkml.org/lkml/2006/1/18/377
Since then, we have had a number of wireless summit meetings all around
the world. Items were discussed, patches were merged, and friendships
were made. Over time, we garnered support from a large range of
wireless networking vendors. Eventually even other technologies
were sending their patches through my trees, and I was consistently
ranked amongst the top 10 "gate keepers" for getting changes into the
Linux kernel. In fact, a couple of years ago I even gave a talk on
how Linux wireless got better. It has been quite a ride!
https://events.linuxfoundation.org/images/stories/pdf/lfcs2012_linville.pdf
Nevertheless, I think it is time for some changes. I have been
the wireless maintainer for a long time, and I personally would
like to develop in a different direction. Plus, I think that Linux
will benefit from having some fresh blood involved in more of the
maintenance duties. I will be stepping aside to let that happen.
The mac80211, bluetooth, and nfc trees have fed through me for some
time. I am now asking these trees to send pull request directly to
David Miller. Since these trees are managed through git, my hope is
that they will not place any significant burden on Dave.
As for the wireless driver patches, I have asked Kalle Valo
to handle patch review and merge duties for everything under the
drivers/net/wireless directory. This will now include not only the ath
patches he already manages, but other drivers that don't have trees
such as mwifiex, rt2x00, rtlwifi, and others. For consistency, the
iwlwifi tree will also be merged through Kalle's new tree. I expect
that Kalle will announce any relevant details in a follow-up message.
The wireless-testing tree is a resource that some people value.
I will continue to provide a wireless-testing tree. Now that tree
will feed from the various wireless trees managed by others, probably
with some sort of regularly scheduled pulls. Details are still to be
determined, but the tree will still exist and will be substantially
similar to how it has been so far.
I also receive notices of new bug reports for wireless LANs on
bugzilla.kernel.org. For now I will continue to triage those reports,
so don't ignore me!! :-)
Some may ask what I will do now -- I wish I had a specific answer.
Immediate plans are to enjoy the coming holidays and my traditional
year-end time away from work. After that...well, I'm sure I will
find something to do. If you have any suggestions for good uses of
my talents, feel free to contact me -- I'm not hard to find!
In closing, I hope everyone will support Kalle and the other wireless
maintainers at least as much as you have supported me for the past
several years. These are good, hard working folks. You are in
good hands!
Regards,
John
P.S. Bonus points for anyone that finds a way for me to become a
professional retro-computing hobbyist... :-)
John,
Many thanks for your service to the wireless community. Although some
individuals still consider Linux wireless to be a mess, you have had a major
impact on coordinating large-scale improvements. I hope you enjoy your new
endeavors as much as I have enjoyed my second career.
I look forward to working with Kalle.
Larry
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