Re: [PATCH] DFU Driver and firmware for Atheros bluetooth chipset AR3011

Marcel Holtmann
2009-11-17T20:27:33Z

Hi Luis,

> On Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 06:59:00AM -0800, Marcel Holtmann wrote:
> > > +MODULE_AUTHOR("Atheros Communications");
> > > +MODULE_DESCRIPTION("Atheros AR3011 firmware driver");
> > > +MODULE_VERSION(DRV_VERSION);
> > > +MODULE_SUPPORTED_DEVICE("Atheros AR3011 chipset");
> > > +MODULE_LICENSE("GPL");
> > > +MODULE_FIRMWARE("atherosbt.bin");
> >
> > The
> > module author needs to have a contact information and not just the
> > company name. Read it as who maintains this driver.
>
> This is probably just following what we have on ath9k / ath9k_common / ath9k_hw / ath
> modules which so far no one has asked us to change:
>
> MODULE_AUTHOR("Atheros Communications");
> MODULE_DESCRIPTION("Support for Atheros 802.11n wireless LAN cards.");
> MODULE_SUPPORTED_DEVICE("Atheros 802.11n WLAN cards");
> MODULE_LICENSE("Dual BSD/GPL");
>
> Using one contact point for ath9k stuff doesn't work for us as we have a group
> and for that the MAINTAINERS file seems just suitable. Plus -- some module authors
> are sometimes not the current maintainers so the MDOULE_AUTHOR really doesn't mean
> much. Wouldn't updating the MAINTAINERS file accordingly be better?

my personal advise for the long term would be to create a mailing list
sort of contact address. As I said, the MODULE_AUTHOR is meant to
reflect the current maintainer. It is of course not a hard requirement,
but it is the intention. If you don't have that right now, we go with
this, but think about establishing something like it.

> Also Vikram -- why not just ISC license the files as we do with ath9k ? Then also
> use:
>
> MODULE_LICENSE("Dual BSD/GPL");
>
> This would be more consistant with what we do with our other upstream Atheros
> modules.

Since this is just a firmware loading driver, I prefer if you just keep
it GPL only. It is not worth going into too much details. Especially
since it looks inspired (nicely phrased) from bcm203x.c driver.

Regards

Marcel