RFC: removal of dabusb driver from Linux Kernel

RFC: removal of dabusb driver from Linux Kernel

[Mauro Carvalho Chehab]

Hi Deti and Georg,

The dabusb driver at the Linux kernel seems to be pretty much unmaintained. Since 2006, when I
moved it to /drivers/media, I received no patches from the driver authors. All the patches
we've got since then were usual trivial fixes and a few other drivers correcting some core
API changes.

Also, I never found anyone with the hardware, in order to test if the driver keeps working.
Is there any commercial hardware using it?

With the removal of BKL, the driver will need fixes or will likely be removed. 

So, if you still care about the driver, please contact me asap. Otherwise, I'll move it to
drivers/staging and mark it to die for 2.6.38.

Thanks,
Mauro

Re: RFC: removal of dabusb driver from Linux Kernel

[Mauro Carvalho Chehab]

Hi,

I'm responsible for the multimedia support at Linux Kernel. I tried to contact the
authors of the DABUSB driver back in september some time ago without any luck.

We're considering the removal of dabusb driver from Linux Kernel, due to a few
reasons:

1) The driver is for an engineering sample only which was never sold as a commercial
   product.
2) The DAB API is completely undocumented and was never reviewed. Should other DAB
   drivers ever appear, then I'd rather start from scratch defining an API then
   continue this dubious API.

>From our research, it seems that a variant of the driver is/where used on some hardware
developed by you and used on some Terratec hardware (Dr Box 1).

If we don't have any answer from you, we'll schedule the driver to be removed from
Linux kernel on the next version, as we were unable to identify anyone using the 
hardware supported at the kernel driver.

Thanks,
Mauro


Em 19-09-2010 09:06, Mauro Carvalho Chehab escreveu:
> Hi Deti and Georg,
> 
> The dabusb driver at the Linux kernel seems to be pretty much unmaintained. Since 2006, when I
> moved it to /drivers/media, I received no patches from the driver authors. All the patches
> we've got since then were usual trivial fixes and a few other drivers correcting some core
> API changes.
> 
> Also, I never found anyone with the hardware, in order to test if the driver keeps working.
> Is there any commercial hardware using it?
> 
> With the removal of BKL, the driver will need fixes or will likely be removed. 
> 
> So, if you still care about the driver, please contact me asap. Otherwise, I'll move it to
> drivers/staging and mark it to die for 2.6.38.
> 
> Thanks,
> Mauro

Re: RFC: removal of dabusb driver from Linux Kernel

[Deti Fliegl]

Hello,

sorry for not answering in time. Please feel free to remove this piece 
of unusable code from the kernel.

Deti

On 12/27/2010 04:39 PM, Mauro Carvalho Chehab wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm responsible for the multimedia support at Linux Kernel. I tried to contact the
> authors of the DABUSB driver back in september some time ago without any luck.
>
> We're considering the removal of dabusb driver from Linux Kernel, due to a few
> reasons:
>
> 1) The driver is for an engineering sample only which was never sold as a commercial
>     product.
> 2) The DAB API is completely undocumented and was never reviewed. Should other DAB
>     drivers ever appear, then I'd rather start from scratch defining an API then
>     continue this dubious API.
>
>  From our research, it seems that a variant of the driver is/where used on some hardware
> developed by you and used on some Terratec hardware (Dr Box 1).
>
> If we don't have any answer from you, we'll schedule the driver to be removed from
> Linux kernel on the next version, as we were unable to identify anyone using the
> hardware supported at the kernel driver.
>
> Thanks,
> Mauro
>
>
> Em 19-09-2010 09:06, Mauro Carvalho Chehab escreveu:
>> Hi Deti and Georg,
>>
>> The dabusb driver at the Linux kernel seems to be pretty much unmaintained. Since 2006, when I
>> moved it to /drivers/media, I received no patches from the driver authors. All the patches
>> we've got since then were usual trivial fixes and a few other drivers correcting some core
>> API changes.
>>
>> Also, I never found anyone with the hardware, in order to test if the driver keeps working.
>> Is there any commercial hardware using it?
>>
>> With the removal of BKL, the driver will need fixes or will likely be removed.
>>
>> So, if you still care about the driver, please contact me asap. Otherwise, I'll move it to
>> drivers/staging and mark it to die for 2.6.38.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Mauro
>

Re: RFC: removal of dabusb driver from Linux Kernel

[Mauro Carvalho Chehab]

Em 27-12-2010 17:49, Deti Fliegl escreveu:
> Hello,
> 
> sorry for not answering in time. Please feel free to remove this piece of unusable code from the kernel.

Hi Deti,

Thanks for your answer. I'll be moving it to staging and scheduling its removal
on 2.6.39.

If you have instead an update for it for some devices that are/were actually
deployed, please feel free to send us the patches.

Thanks!
Mauro
> 
> Deti
> 
> On 12/27/2010 04:39 PM, Mauro Carvalho Chehab wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I'm responsible for the multimedia support at Linux Kernel. I tried to contact the
>> authors of the DABUSB driver back in september some time ago without any luck.
>>
>> We're considering the removal of dabusb driver from Linux Kernel, due to a few
>> reasons:
>>
>> 1) The driver is for an engineering sample only which was never sold as a commercial
>>     product.
>> 2) The DAB API is completely undocumented and was never reviewed. Should other DAB
>>     drivers ever appear, then I'd rather start from scratch defining an API then
>>     continue this dubious API.
>>
>>  From our research, it seems that a variant of the driver is/where used on some hardware
>> developed by you and used on some Terratec hardware (Dr Box 1).
>>
>> If we don't have any answer from you, we'll schedule the driver to be removed from
>> Linux kernel on the next version, as we were unable to identify anyone using the
>> hardware supported at the kernel driver.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Mauro
>>
>>
>> Em 19-09-2010 09:06, Mauro Carvalho Chehab escreveu:
>>> Hi Deti and Georg,
>>>
>>> The dabusb driver at the Linux kernel seems to be pretty much unmaintained. Since 2006, when I
>>> moved it to /drivers/media, I received no patches from the driver authors. All the patches
>>> we've got since then were usual trivial fixes and a few other drivers correcting some core
>>> API changes.
>>>
>>> Also, I never found anyone with the hardware, in order to test if the driver keeps working.
>>> Is there any commercial hardware using it?
>>>
>>> With the removal of BKL, the driver will need fixes or will likely be removed.
>>>
>>> So, if you still care about the driver, please contact me asap. Otherwise, I'll move it to
>>> drivers/staging and mark it to die for 2.6.38.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Mauro
>>
> 
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