From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Date: Fri, 4 Mar 2011 16:23:57 -0800 From: Greg KH Message-ID: <20110305002357.GA27622@kroah.com> References: <20110304233219.GB28060@kroah.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: Subject: Re: [Tech-board-discuss] Obtaining hardware for writing Linux drivers? List-Id: public TAB mailing list List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , To: Chris Ball Cc: tech-board-discuss@lists.linux-foundation.org On Fri, Mar 04, 2011 at 06:51:06PM -0500, Chris Ball wrote: > Hi Greg, thanks for the reply, > > On Fri, Mar 04 2011, Greg KH wrote: > > On Fri, Mar 04, 2011 at 04:23:31PM -0500, Chris Ball wrote: > >> In the case of this particular device, I was pointed at Bdale Garbee by > >> people on IRC (but wouldn't have known to e-mail him myself) and will > >> see if I can get him to help. But, even assuming he can help me, that > >> still doesn't solve the problem in the general case. Any ideas? > > > > I'd be glad to step up and work on accomplishing this. But, supposing I > > am successful in getting these contacts and keeping them up to date, how > > would you recommend that we publicize this type of functionality that we > > could now provide? > > A strawman proposal might look like: > > * A mail to lkml announcing the program > * LWN article doing the same > * A mail to LF company members asking them to nominate a contact > person and encouraging them to take part, explaining how they'll > benefit from people who *already* want to write drivers for them > for free and just can't get the hardware they need to do so. I think I'll do the last one first, to get a critical mass before announcing it. Supposedly we already have a technical contact at every LF member company that would be the person we could use for this contact, but I need to follow up and track that information down to get it in a usable form. > Once a decent mass of kernel hackers know about it, I'm sure it'll > spread by word of mouth to reach everyone else who needs to know; > I don't think there'll be a problem with disseminating the program > once the first batch of hackers knows about it. You are probably right, but it never ceases to amaze me how no one reads our documentation, so putting it in a prominate place will be good :) I'll work on this and let you know how it goes. thanks, greg k-h