Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 28 Jun 2007 17:30:51 +0100 | From | Alan Cox <> | Subject | Re: Please release a stable kernel Linux 3.0 |
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> Fair enough: > http://www.tahomatech.com/downloads/drivers/linux_2.6/pci/x86/compressed_tarfiles/ > or for your browsing pleasure: > http://www.tahomatech.com/downloads/drivers/linux_2.6/pci/x86/files/ > > But I really don't see much hope :( Coding style, masses of ioctls, > build and install technique, limited user base, etc, etc, etc... Most > of the above to keep API compatibility with other OS/older drivers - > back to SunOS 4.1.3. (BTW, it does seem to work...)
Its small, its relatively sanely structured and its not that bad stylewise. Nothing a few seds, an indent and a polish wouldn't cure. As to the ioctls - its a specialised driver for specialised purposes so the ioctls are not IMHO an issue beyond worrying about compat_ and if you want compat_ interfaces for them or not.
> And I probably have the license wrong. The code has always been in > the public domain. (Advice welcome...)
Public domain is GPL compatible.
> My (mild) beef is more like what I take to be Al's point: it feels like > there is a kind of hostility toward out-of-tree maintainers. Why not
Some of that comes about because a lot of them are out of tree maintaining non-free stuff, shipping binary products - often entirely binary without a Linux or GPL label - until the man in black catches them and sues them in Germany.
> encourage _all_ of us who are beavering away at open-source code? My > stuff doesn't belong in mainline, but it _is_ open, and in some minor > way allows more folks to run Linux.
Quite honestly your stuff is *less* obscure than some of the hardware we have in-tree drivers for, and rather cleaner.
> A cleaned-up, consistent, and out-of-tree friendly way of handling API > changes might help us all.
The problem is that its very impractical. If I change a kernel API I fix up the in tree users and test those I can, that's "accepted practice" - you make mess doing a job you clean it up. I can't do that for out of tree code because its out of tree. - 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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