From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S933330AbXAaXJx (ORCPT ); Wed, 31 Jan 2007 18:09:53 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S933340AbXAaXJx (ORCPT ); Wed, 31 Jan 2007 18:09:53 -0500 Received: from rgminet01.oracle.com ([148.87.113.118]:54047 "EHLO rgminet01.oracle.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S933330AbXAaXJw (ORCPT ); Wed, 31 Jan 2007 18:09:52 -0500 Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2007 15:04:51 -0800 From: Randy Dunlap To: Theodore Tso Cc: Greg KH , Nicolas Mailhot , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Free Linux Driver Development! Message-Id: <20070131150451.070fa90f.randy.dunlap@oracle.com> In-Reply-To: <20070131230014.GD20514@thunk.org> References: <32793.192.54.193.51.1170248792.squirrel@rousalka.dyndns.org> <20070131201258.GB15128@kroah.com> <20070131230014.GD20514@thunk.org> Organization: Oracle Linux Eng. X-Mailer: Sylpheed 2.3.0 (GTK+ 2.8.10; x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Whitelist: TRUE X-Whitelist: TRUE X-Brightmail-Tracker: AAAAAQAAAAI= Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Wed, 31 Jan 2007 18:00:15 -0500 Theodore Tso wrote: > On Wed, Jan 31, 2007 at 12:12:58PM -0800, Greg KH wrote: > > > > This kind of offer has _always_ been there for out-of-tree GPL drivers. > > I have contacted many different groups and driver authors over the years > > to offer my help in trying to get their code into the mainline kernel. > > > > Some take me up on the offer, others ignore it, and still others activly > > refuse to do so, saying they want to stay out-of-the tree (lirc is one > > of these examples...) > > I think the point is that if we are offering free development effort > to write a driver which goes into mainline, maybe we should provide > more than "providing rules and guidelines" so that people can spend > engineering $$$ to get the driver into mainline. > > More specifically, Dave said that it "seemed rude" to just take the > driver and send updates, but maybe the best way of dealing with > out-of-tree drivers like lirc is to treat the out-of-tree drivers as a > kind of spec release, and just have someone in the community forcibly > take the code, fix it up, and then get it merged. Maybe it's being > "rude", but so is not responding to requests to get it merged. and I'm quite willing to apply Doc/CodingStyle to driver source file(s). That's as easy as replying to an email with comments about it. --- ~Randy