On 2023/10/10 5:22, Arend Van Spriel wrote:
On 10/6/2023 2:21 PM, Kalle Valo wrote:
Julian Calaby <julian.calaby@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
Hi Dmitry,
(relevant people and lists CC'd)
On Fri, Oct 6, 2023 at 3:16 AM Dmitry Antipov <dmantipov@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Kalle,
what's an actual status of brcm80211 driver? It seems
that the relevant MAINTAINERS entries are no longer
useful, and [1] states that Broadcom is just "disappeared".
Arend hasn't posted since February:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-wireless/63f72045-e51d-d9a4-a0ed-c221bcdcee03@xxxxxxxxx/
Franky is still reviewing things as of early August:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-wireless/CA+8PC_evb-6Y3dKnAN4BN=ODEVxY5-cDb6Lc72u0j1WBtx7p1A@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx/
Hante hasn't posted since 2018:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-wireless/4f6223b8083ed69432493a37d4f45b69@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx/
Hector Martin has a bunch of Apple-specific patches downstream in the
Asahi Linux kernel and has been looking for guidance on how to
upstream it without any real answers:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-wireless/181af6e9-799d-b730-dc14-ee2de2541f35@xxxxxxxxx/
There's also speculation that the Raspberry Pi people have downstream
patches too, but I haven't been able to find anything concrete in a
very brief search.
Thanks for the research, that is helpful.
Finally, the Cypress / Infineon people appear to be uninterested in
discussing the driver.
I think it's pretty safe to say that this driver is nearly
unmaintained by Broadcom, definitely unmaintained by Cypress /
Infineon and Arend is unable to answer questions relating to anything
beyond the code as-written.
Kalle, should this driver get orphaned?
We definitely need to consider that but let's first wait for Arend to
comment.
Using my personal email account to comment. Broadcom has pulled away
most resources from the brcm80211 drivers as there is no business
interest for it and it turned into a one-fifth man show as I was granted
to work one day a week on brcm80211. Nice theory but in practice other
work always takes priority. So "nearly unmaintained" is no exaggeration.
I probably can not meet the expectations some people in the community
have regarding driver maintainers, but I can still review patch
submissions although I should keep a better eye on the list to do that.
It would not be my choice to abandon brcm80211, but if my contributions
are considered insufficient than I will accept that fact.
Ever since Infineon took over Cypress wifi business things turned quiet
soon. Their website still claims brcmfmac is the driver to use. Earlier
this year I did have contact with them to hear whether they were
committed to the driver. At least I got an answer, but not much more
than that.
Okay, so pragmatically, this needs a new maintainer. Would you be okay
with adding myself as a co-maintainer? You could leave yourself as a
maintainer or downgrade yourself to reviewer.
We should also remove the other two Broadcom folks from the maintainers
list if they are effectively gone.
I expect my patch submissions to be reviewed by someone (in general); if
we do this, that could be anyone (not just you), therefore unblocking
upstreaming of Apple hardware related changes.
From my point of view, pragmatically, the most useful things that a
Broadcom employee can do to help this driver out without being an
outright maintainer are:
- Answering questions (about firmwares, compats, hardware revisions,
debugging, etc.) in a reasonably timely manner
- Testing on a wider variety of hardware
If someone can at least validate that my firmware version gates and such
are done properly, then there's a chance we won't randomly break other
chips. If someone can actively test on other hardware, even better. If I
end up being the only one keeping the driver afloat, as I mentioned in
my other reply, all I can promise is decent support on chips Apple uses.
- Hector
