[PATCH 00/20] staging: brcm80211: 7th reaction for mainline patch #2

[Rafał Miłecki]

2011/9/20 John W. Linville <linville at tuxdriver.com>:
> On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 03:21:14PM +0200, Johannes Berg wrote:
>
>> Now, don't get me wrong -- I don't think the duplication is a good
>> thing. A lot of the PHY code could be shared. However, I think it will
>> probably not be possible for much longer to share the higher level MAC
>> code that programs the SHM etc.
>
> It would be nice to see some of this.  I don't think anything is
> stopping either Broadcom _or_ the b43 team from posting such patches.
>
>> So I don't claim to know what the solution is, but I think simply
>> rejecting the Broadcom effort like most people seem to imply is a good
>> solution at all. It will leave all of us in a bad spot by creating a
>> driver that has to support too many different devices.
>
> I'm inclined to agree.  Despite recent heroic efforts, b43 remains
> behind in it's support for current features of Broadcom hardware.
> As developers find other gainful interests, that gap is sure to widen
> -- it certainly was quite wide just a few months ago.

And brcmsmac stays behind b43 if you count feature different than
performance. Monitor, RFKILL, Ad-hoc, AP, hw crypt, supported PHYs,
etc.

And what if Broadcom decides to abound their brcm80211 project?

I vote for working together, I can not see a better solution.


> As Johannes implies, it seems likely that newer Broadcom hardware will
> need to be supported by a different/new driver anyway.  Is there
> some reason why that new driver needs to have a b43 pedigree?
> If we want/expect Broadcom to support that new driver, is it so
> unreasonable to allow them to start from the codebase they prefer?
> I don't think it is.

We still don't have any clue, when is that going to happen.


> Broadcom has come a long way in the wireless arena.  I think we would
> be better served by bringing them into the fold than by continuing
> to demand what they don't feel able to provide.

That's why I asked so many times already to discuss future with them.

-- 
Rafał