Re: Current status of rt2800usb and staging/rt2870

[Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz <bzolnier@gmail.com>]

On Wednesday 14 October 2009 20:56:17 Ivo van Doorn wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> > > On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 05:28:21PM +0200, Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz wrote:
> > > 
> > > > I don't have a have a problem with it personally as long as people accept
> > > > the competition..  but instead of working on _their_ projects they go around
> > > > screaming at everybody who does not want to spin inside the great process
> > > > designed by them..
> > > 
> > > Please whine somewhere else.  You have the freedom to work in
> > > drivers/staging all you want.  You do not have the power to force us to
> > > like it -- especially in a case where you are diverting attention from
> > > the community-maintained drivers instead of cooperating with them.
> > 
> > Cooperating you say.
> > 
> > rtl8187 -- before starting the work on rtl8187se I've pinged the maintainer
> > to coordinate the effort and hear his opinion on how to progress..
> > 
> > I've never heard back.
> > 
> > rt2x00 -- I know that people have datasheets for some chipsets but I've
> > never heard "How can we help you" etc. thing.
> 
> The rt2x00 members received the specsheets under the condition that we didn't
> distribute them further.
> 
> So everybody which requested the datasheets from the rt2x00 project were presented
> with a choice:
> 1) We provide the email address of the Ralink contact person which can device if you
> can get the specsheet or not (possibly under NDA, but this isn't always the case).
> 2) Specific questions about the registers can be asked and we give all the information we
> know from our work on the rt2x00 project plus additional information from the specsheet.
> Seeing that the specsheet doesn't always match reality, you get the better answers with
> this option, but some people just hate it when they need to ask other people for stuff.
> 
> > All I've ever heard was _lies_ about current state of affairs or that
> > my work is in the way.
> 
> I have encounterd your email address in only 2 rt2x00 related discussions
> (yes I have checked my entire email archive). Both cases were regarding
> staging vs rt2x00.
> 
> So far I never said rt2800usb or rt2800pci were high quality, I never said they were in a good
> shape. On the other hand, I often talked about the problems with the drivers, requesting help
> to improve the drivers, etc etc.
> 
> So are you basing this "I am hearing lies" about a random person talking on the street
> about rt2x00 which is telling the lie?

Maybe I've used a bit too strong wording but the fact is that vendor drivers
are useful for providing users with *unsupported* and *temporary* solution
until the proper drivers are in place have been questioned a lot in the past,
and sorry but it is a fact (it may be hard to swallow but it shouldn't be
discussed about).

The staging is a new game in town and provides real benefit for end-users
to use their hardware early while proper solutions are being worked on (not
like most of distributions weren't shipping crap drivers anyway -- now at
least we have some control over it).

This is extremely important in segments where Linux is still not the leading
OS.  We cannot tell users to go hike -- they are our users! Moreover they
are quite smart so they will use what works best for their needs anyway,
not necessarily what is the easiest for us to maintain in the long-term or
work on.

Staging also helps companies involved to transform their software offerings
in a more smooth way.  Often such transition requires long process and much
work on the company side to adapt to our model of doing things so patience
is recommended.  (Lets not forget that staging provides also a stick part,
drivers are removed from staging if nobody cares about them and even if
there are volunteers caring about support for certain hardware the company
will still get a bad publicity if it doesn't participate in the process)..

So staging is here to stay and it is up to particular maintainers how they
are going to it use this "tool" and integrate it into their current mode of
operation..

I'm sorry if my words were offending to you or other wireless developers.
I kind of feel the frustration of people who had put years of effort into
providing the proper wireless infrastructure + drivers and are ignored
by vendors.  However we have to keep the ball rolling and cannot dismiss
valid user complaints or ignore other possibilities of doing things.

Bartlomiej