Hi, On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 09:02:48AM -0400, John W. Linville wrote: > On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 02:43:54PM +0200, Johannes Berg wrote: > > Hi Marcel, > > > > > just to document the irony here. Two or three years ago at OLS, Kyle and > > > Greg were making fun of Ubuntu merging its 5th wireless stack into their > > > kernel. Now the staging crap is doing exactly the same. > > > > :) > > > > Actually, last I counted it was already 7 or 8 stacks in staging _only_. > > This (and the other patch) will add two more. Not to mention that of > > course we already have something like two and a half stacks in the > > kernel tree (mac80211, in hostapd, and libipw [former ieee80211]). > > FWIW I had started trying to consolidate some code between those three. > I stalled-out a bit and got distracted with the rndis_wlan cfg80211 > bits, but I hope to get back to it. Of course, hostap seems mighty > complex internally -- it might just have to lay there. And libipw > and mac80211 target different types of designs, but I hope they can > eventually share some infrastructure in lib80211. > > None of the above is meant to disagree about the staging crap. > Having that stuff around is at best an optimistic attempt to help a > few stray users... :-) Well, gosh, I understand the criticism here and if I were a kernel developer I imagine my perspective would be much the same. But I can't help but feel that there's some amount of hypocrisy when we hammer on a manufacturer to properly license their driver and then let it drop dead when they do. I understand that the problem would be solved if they manufacturers would suddenly "get it," but the scale of social problem preventing that is likely too large to change anytime soon. If kernel developers are too busy to support the hardware, why do the manufacturers take so much criticism for releasing binary-only drivers or badly licensed drivers, or for neglecting to release technical specifications? If what I'm sensing is correct and there's no practical likelihood of these devices getting in-kernel support even with those issues resolved, the criticism almost seems unjustified. I appreciate what the kernel developers do, of course, and my intention is not to ruffle feathers. But when a manufacturer that has taken a lot of criticism for its approach to the Linux community shows some good will, it seems like we ought to be able to turn that into something productive. If we can't, what have we been complaining about? My apologies if I'm way off on this. I haven't been around all that long so it is certainly possible. Respectfully, Forest -- Forest Bond http://www.alittletooquiet.net http://www.pytagsfs.org
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