Messages in this thread | | | Date | Wed, 31 Jan 2007 21:50:57 -0800 | From | Greg KH <> | Subject | Re: Free Linux Driver Development! |
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On Wed, Jan 31, 2007 at 10:15:20PM +0100, Nicolas Mailhot wrote: > Le mercredi 31 janvier 2007 ?? 12:12 -0800, Greg KH a ??crit : > > On Wed, Jan 31, 2007 at 02:06:32PM +0100, Nicolas Mailhot wrote: > > [Reordering for the sake of argument] > > > > There are many out-of-tree drivers (ivtv, lirc, various webcam > > > drivers, > > > enhanced USB keyboard handlers...) with merging not planified or taking > > > ages. > > > > See my above comment about lirc. As for the others, everyone knows > > where we are at, and what the critera is for getting their code into the > > tree, so it's not like we are hiding anywhere :) > > The perception of many out-of-tree projects is "if I try to get in-tree > I'll be submitted to vicious review, and I'll have to fix the code my > myself, and that's assuming someone bothers to review it at all". What > you've just wrote is no different: > > > we will gladly take any > > currently out-of-the-tree drivers into mainline, as long as they follow > > our rules and coding style issues, please do so. > > In other words, getting an out-of-tree driver in is a major unrewarding > work commitment for its author (especially considering that if he was > familiar with good kernel coding, chances are he'd have worked in-tree > from the start, with an experimental driver) > > Contrast it with "give us a partial NDAed spec and we'll write a driver > from scratch for you".
Sometimes doing a driver from scratch is much less effort than trying to reengineer a badly designed and written driver to get it into the kernel tree.
Also, almost all out-of-tree driver authors know what they need to do to get the code into the kernel tree.
Again, I've offered my services to many such groups in the past. A lot of them do get into the tree, and I'll continue to offer my services to do this.
But again, that's not the main point of this announcement sorry.
> You're asking way more of people that have a lot less resources than > hardware manufacturers. Many of those projects did try to get in-tree at > least once before giving up.
Persistance is everything :)
> Meanwhile you're asking for specs of hardware no Linux user has, because > no form of Linux support ever existed. This is a strange use of > resources.
You are free to use your resources however you wish, and mine how I wish. Would you want it to be any other way? :)
thanks,
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