Broadcom's wireless drivers, one year later [LWN.net]

Broadcom's wireless drivers, one year later

Posted Aug 30, 2011 21:33 UTC (Tue) by Julie (guest, #66693)
Parent article: Broadcom's wireless drivers, one year later

there are no managers paying attention to how developers spend their time

A sort of PA/receptionist for the busiest maintainers would be nice to help avoid this type of mix-up, and one for linux-kernel to sit on the mailing list and prod new testers/patch submitters in the right direction (maybe sponsored by the Linux Foundation? :-)

The kernel must be pretty unique for a project of its size to have _no-one_ responsible for co-ordination between its contributors.

I suppose one _might_ point a finger at the maintainer, but Greg seems to be spread waaaay too thinly as it is to have done anything about this :-/ ...

That said, I feel really sorry for the Broadcom devs, they've done a huge amount of work trying to bring the drivers up to quality and their contributions to the linuxdriverproject list have generally been a model of patience and politeness. It's a real shame if all that goes to waste.

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Broadcom's wireless drivers, one year later

Posted Aug 31, 2011 18:47 UTC (Wed) by gregkh (subscriber, #8) [Link] (1 responses)

> I suppose one _might_ point a finger at the maintainer,
> but Greg seems to be spread waaaay too thinly as it is
> to have done anything about this :-/ ...

Um, what did I do wrong here? I watch the staging drivers, I don't,
and will not, track all of the wireless drivers at the same time, that's
an impossible task for anyone to assume of anyone.

As for me being "spread waaay too thinly" am I not doing something I am
supposed to be doing here? What am I doing not as well as I should?

Also note that I have a day job as well, my staging work is almost always
on my own time.

As for an "assistant" for us, sure, sign up, we'll gladly accept such
help, no one has ever offered to do that before.

Broadcom's wireless drivers, one year later

Posted Aug 31, 2011 22:34 UTC (Wed) by Julie (guest, #66693) [Link]

I'm very sorry, Greg, I think you misunderstood my comment (or maybe I wasn't clear enough). I was totally not sniping at you - quite the opposite. By 'spread waaay too thinly' I merely meant (from all I had observed) that you were already insanely busy/oversubscribed so it was unreasonable for you to take on any more work (I was specifically thinking of the wireless devs and their separate mailing list when I made this comment, the drivers project is really huge as it is. And before anyone says anything - no, I don't think it's the wireless devs' fault either).

Maintainers have to take a loose responsibility for those working in their area and they have enough to do as there is, I meant by my comment that it was a bit much to expect you all to do _everything_ (the Broadcom drivers obviously being staging ones and thus falling under your jurisdiction). From the point of view of someone observing the general kernel development process, the sensible person to look to to guide inter-dev co-ordination and avoid communication failures otherwise might be a maintainer. Maybe this seems flippant to an established kernel hacker. I didn't intend it to be. I was trying to look at it from the perspective of an (outside) company wondering where something went wrong.

As for the 'assistant' I'd love a job like this but I have to do my day job too :-) As I still learn the best I can do in the short term - which I have done and will continue to do - is prod appropriate people from kernelnewbies and other mailing lists I follow towards the linuxdriverproject list, or tell people about patch preparation and development policy (for those too lazy or confused to read Documentation/ or use google) in the hopes of making existing developers' lives a bit easier :-)
Hopefully I will become more useful in the long run :-)