On 4/20/21 8:16 AM, Willy Tarreau wrote: > On Tue, Apr 20, 2021 at 07:56:18AM +0200, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote: >> I would LOVE it if some "executives" would see the above presentations, >> because then they would maybe actually fund developers to fix bugs and >> maintain the kernel code, instead of only allowing them to add new >> features. >> >> Seriously, that's the real problem, that Dmitry's work has exposed, the >> lack of people allowed to do this type of bugfixing and maintenance on >> company time, for something that the company relies on, is a huge issue. >> "executives" feel that they are willing to fund the initial work and >> then "throw it over the wall to the community" once it is merged, and >> then they can forget about it as "the community" will maintain it for >> them for free. And that's a lie, as Dmitry's work shows. > That's sadly the eternal situation, and I'm suspecting that software > development and maintenance is not identified as a requirement for a > large number of hardware vendors, especially on the consumer side where > margins are lower. A contractor is paid to develop a driver, *sometimes* > to try to mainline it (and the later they engage with the community, the > longer it takes in round trips), and once the code finally gets merged, > all the initial budget is depleted and no more software work will be > done. > > Worse, we could imagine kicking unmaintained drivers faster off the > tree, but that would actually help these unscrupulous vendors by > forcing their customers to switch to the new model :-/ And most of > them wouldn't care either if their contributions were refused based > on their track record of not maintaining their code, since they often > see this as a convenience to please their customers and not something > they need (after all, relying on a bogus and vulnerable BSP has never > prevented from selling a device, quite the opposite). > > In short, there is a parallel universe where running highly bogus and > vulnerable out-of-tree code seems like the norm and where there is no > sort of care for what is mainlined as it's possibly just made to look > "cool". In the parallel universe where I spent most time everyone now need to learn how to make their things to work out-of-tree. And there is not much of business case trying to fix and improve core parts of linux. The turn around have increased a lot and there is no edge doing it. > We also need to recognize that it's expectable that some vendors are > not willing to engage on supporting a driver for a decade if they > expect their device to last 5 years only, and maybe we should make > some rules clear about mainlining drivers and what to expect for > users (in which case the end of support would be clear and nobody > would be surprised if the driver is removed at the end of its > maintenance, barring a switch to a community maintainer). Things have changed. Once upon a time the community was happy if it could get hardware specs. > Just my two cents, > Willy
