RFC: Remove gspca and old ISA radio drivers

RFC: Remove gspca and old ISA radio drivers

[Hans Verkuil]

Hi all,

Would there be any objection to removing the gspca driver for all those old
webcams with horrible quality and that nobody should be using anyway, and
for the old ISA radio drivers where I am pretty sure I'm the only one that
can actually test them (and even that is questionable).

I could move them to staging/deprecated for a kernel cycle, but to be honest
I think we should just kick them out.

It also allows me to throw away a lot of old hardware and make some room for
new hardware :-)

Regards,

	Hans

Re: RFC: Remove gspca and old ISA radio drivers

[Laurent Pinchart]

Hi Hans,

On Tue, Sep 22, 2026 at 05:37:03PM +0200, Hans Verkuil wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Would there be any objection to removing the gspca driver for all those old
> webcams with horrible quality and that nobody should be using anyway, and
> for the old ISA radio drivers where I am pretty sure I'm the only one that
> can actually test them (and even that is questionable).
> 
> I could move them to staging/deprecated for a kernel cycle, but to be honest
> I think we should just kick them out.

No objection from me. gspca doesn't bother me though, as it's quite
self-contained. I would be happier to see the em28xx driver go when it
will be time, as it's one of the few users of some legacy subdev APIs I
would like to drop. As far as I understand, that driver is however more
widely used.

> It also allows me to throw away a lot of old hardware and make some room for
> new hardware :-)

I wonder if some computer science museums would have an interest in
those. I suppose they're not the most interesting devices.

-- 
Regards,

Laurent Pinchart

Re: RFC: Remove gspca and old ISA radio drivers

[Hans Verkuil]

On 22/09/2026 17:55, Laurent Pinchart wrote:
> Hi Hans,
> 
> On Tue, Sep 22, 2026 at 05:37:03PM +0200, Hans Verkuil wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> Would there be any objection to removing the gspca driver for all those old
>> webcams with horrible quality and that nobody should be using anyway, and
>> for the old ISA radio drivers where I am pretty sure I'm the only one that
>> can actually test them (and even that is questionable).
>>
>> I could move them to staging/deprecated for a kernel cycle, but to be honest
>> I think we should just kick them out.
> 
> No objection from me. gspca doesn't bother me though, as it's quite
> self-contained. I would be happier to see the em28xx driver go when it
> will be time, as it's one of the few users of some legacy subdev APIs I
> would like to drop. As far as I understand, that driver is however more
> widely used.

That's still in use, and quite a lot too. I still get patches adding support
for new em28xx products. If you want to get rid of legacy in that driver,
then it is best to get em28xx based hardware and make patches. This driver
won't go away any time soon.

> 
>> It also allows me to throw away a lot of old hardware and make some room for
>> new hardware :-)
> 
> I wonder if some computer science museums would have an interest in
> those. I suppose they're not the most interesting devices.
> 

Not old enough, and not special enough.

Now, I also have one of the first consumer webcams (Connectix QuickCam,
parallel port, grayscale), that one might indeed be of interest for a museum.

Regards,

	Hans

Re: RFC: Remove gspca and old ISA radio drivers

[Laurent Pinchart]

On Wed, Sep 23, 2026 at 08:29:58AM +0200, Hans Verkuil wrote:
> On 22/09/2026 17:55, Laurent Pinchart wrote:
> > On Tue, Sep 22, 2026 at 05:37:03PM +0200, Hans Verkuil wrote:
> >> Hi all,
> >>
> >> Would there be any objection to removing the gspca driver for all those old
> >> webcams with horrible quality and that nobody should be using anyway, and
> >> for the old ISA radio drivers where I am pretty sure I'm the only one that
> >> can actually test them (and even that is questionable).
> >>
> >> I could move them to staging/deprecated for a kernel cycle, but to be honest
> >> I think we should just kick them out.
> > 
> > No objection from me. gspca doesn't bother me though, as it's quite
> > self-contained. I would be happier to see the em28xx driver go when it
> > will be time, as it's one of the few users of some legacy subdev APIs I
> > would like to drop. As far as I understand, that driver is however more
> > widely used.
> 
> That's still in use, and quite a lot too. I still get patches adding support
> for new em28xx products. If you want to get rid of legacy in that driver,
> then it is best to get em28xx based hardware and make patches. This driver
> won't go away any time soon.

Yes, I know. I was expressing a long term wish :-)

> >> It also allows me to throw away a lot of old hardware and make some room for
> >> new hardware :-)
> > 
> > I wonder if some computer science museums would have an interest in
> > those. I suppose they're not the most interesting devices.
> 
> Not old enough, and not special enough.
> 
> Now, I also have one of the first consumer webcams (Connectix QuickCam,
> parallel port, grayscale), that one might indeed be of interest for a museum.

At the very least for the section of the museum aimed at generating
reactions along the line of "PEOPLE DID THAT????" :-)

-- 
Regards,

Laurent Pinchart