Re: Vendor support stickers for devices supported under Linux wireless

[Johannes Berg <johannes@sipsolutions.net>]

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On Thu, 2008-07-31 at 10:05 -0700, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:

> > I would also add to the contract a requirement to offer Linux support
> > for, say, the next five years.
> 
> Not sure if we should call it a contract unless its understood its an
> informal contract with the community.

There has to be some form of contract. The logo is copyrighted,
obviously, so there has to be a contract for you to be allowed to print
it on a box.

> Also I don't think we should be
> specific about a time frame for support -- its difficult enough to get
> the driver upstream, not that its not possible I just think it we
> should strive to at least get vendors to properly support Linux by
> submitting their drivers for upstream into Linus' tree. Support tends
> to come naturally after that :)

Because sometimes there are users who care. I think though that the
vendor should participate in future development by testing and fixing
their driver, for at least a period of time. Five years may be too much,
given the current chip livetime maybe one or two would make sense,
kernel releases are only roughly every three months.

Mind you, I wasn't talking about user support, but rather development
support, kinda like a SUPPORTED tag in the MAINTAINERS file.

johannes

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