Messages in this thread | | | Date | Wed, 4 Jan 2006 15:06:58 -0800 | From | Stephen Hemminger <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH 0/15] Ubuntu patch sync |
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On Wed, 04 Jan 2006 17:45:39 -0500 Ben Collins <ben.collins@ubuntu.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-01-04 at 14:30 -0800, Stephen Hemminger wrote: > > On Wed, 04 Jan 2006 17:12:48 -0500 > > Ben Collins <ben.collins@ubuntu.com> wrote: > > > > > On Wed, 2006-01-04 at 14:06 -0800, Stephen Hemminger wrote: > > > > On Wed, 04 Jan 2006 16:59:02 -0500 > > > > Ben Collins <bcollins@ubuntu.com> wrote: > > > > > > > > > These patches are just attempts to merge code from the ubuntu kernel tree. > > > > > This is most of the differences between our tree and stock code (not > > > > > necessarily all differences, since we do have a lot of external drivers > > > > > pulled in). > > > > > > > > Why not submit them too? > > > > > > Because neither I nor Ubuntu maintains them as upstream. I would rather > > > leave it to the upstream authors of those drivers (e.g. rt2400, rt2500, > > > unionfs, etc.) to submit their own code to Linus. > > > > > > > Just want to needle the upstream drivers to submit and get reviewed. > > After dealing with literally dozens of upstream drivers, I think the > reasons boil down to a few categories: > > 1 - They know their code is crappy and they don't want to deal with code > review.
Then find some friendly reviewers. It doesn't have to be a "throw crap over the wall and see what flys back review". If it has dicey locking and race issues, then the security and reliability of the whole system is effected.
> 2 - They want to retain total control of their code. Having it in the > kernel tree means that the driver can be modified by others (in usually > correct ways) without their consent. They don't want to have to track > these changes and accommodate them. Also, external drivers tend to > retain a lot of backward compatibility for older kernel versions, that > would surely be dropped if it was placed in the kernel proper.
And therefore their driver gets broken regularly. The modified by others is almost always for small compatibility stuff.
> 3 - They don't think their driver is important enough. They have a small > user base, and deal directly with those users.
If it is important enough for Ubuntu to ship, then it probably is important enough to get out of the closet.
> 4 - They just don't know how.
Which is true, unfortunately, unless they read about it on a regular basis, most people will plead ignorance.
> Not defending any of these reasons. I'd love to not have all this work > of pulling in and tracking the drivers that our users need/want, but > it's going to be a lot of work. Maybe I'll start emailing them about > getting their code in the kernel tree.
I don't mean to play shoot the messenger, you are helping a lot by doing this I wish every distro did.
-- Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@osdl.org> OSDL http://developer.osdl.org/~shemminger - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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