linux devel [was Re: Fedora Core 2 wishlists]

[Xose Vazquez Perez]

Alan Cox wrote:

> Adaptec has Mark assigned to work on aacraid part time. But don't expect
> anything for 2.6 until 2.6 is out and a bit more stable. Thats been a general
> vendor reaction unfortunately. 

> I normally also do bits on aacraid but I'm doing an MBA right now so its
> just a fraction of Mark's time, and the truth is nobody is asking Adaptec
> for 2.6 support yet and won't until 2.6 is in the deployment radar of
> people like Dell.

Yes, and he is also responsible for dpt_i2o driver.
After you left the kernel development, nobody worried to include latest aacraid
patches in 2.4, yes 2.4!! But for 2.6 inclusion the responsible of it is
Mark Haverkamp <markh at osdl.org>.

aacraid was an example, but there are more drivers in the same situation. Mainly
SCSI, IMO the most critical out there (NET drivers are _very_ well maintained).

HW companies work in the 'tradicional way': they write drivers, then it pass
to control quality team and later they put it on a web page for rh_YY, suse_XX...
And it never reaches linux-ZZ-ml. Only if a hacker worry by it, it's included
into the kernel.

This is a real cut of some thoughts of HW vendors:

"Incorporation into the tree can not be performed as no one is designated as
the gatekeeper. We do have a designated gatekeeper for the XXXXXX driver,
which is kept relatively up-to-date in the 2.6 tree."

annoying.