Re: [PATCH 02/22] Firmware interface code for IB device.

[Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>]

On Sat, Feb 18, 2006 at 10:15:09AM -0800, Greg KH wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 18, 2006 at 08:32:28AM -0800, Roland Dreier wrote:
> >     Arjan> The bigger issue is: if people can't be bothered to do
> >     Arjan> those steps, why would they be bothered to do this for
> >     Arjan> maintenance and bugfixes etc etc?  Basically it's now
> >     Arjan> already a de-facto unmaintained driver....
> > 
> > I don't think that's really a fair statement.  The IBM people have
> > been active and responsive in maintaining their driving in the
> > openib.org svn tree.  However, they asked me to post their driver for
> > review because it would be difficult for them to do it.
> 
> Checking stuff into a private svn tree is vastly different from posting
> to lkml in public.  In fact, it looks like the svn tree is so far ahead
> of the in-kernel stuff, that most people are just using it instead of
> the in-kernel code.
> 
> I know at least one company has asked a distro to just accept the svn
> snapshot over the in-kernel IB code, which makes me wonder if the
> in-kernel stuff is even useful to people?  Why have it, if companies
> insist on using the out-of-tree stuff instead?

The openib tree isn't private.  It's mostly just a staging area for
development.  Any company that wants it included into a distro release
is completely clueless.