Merging Allwinner support

The kernel is GPL, you can do whatever you like with it as long as you continue to provide the changes under the GPL guidelines. I don't see the kernel developers saying "you must apologize to us for not working with us". I saw several comments to let them keep their work out of tree. Their work is also under the GPL, and can be pulled in properly by anyone that wants to follow the Linux Kernel rules.

The whole "apologize" comment had no place in that conversation. If Luke needs to follow social customs and "apologize" on behalf of the kernel developers to gain favor from the managers at Allwinner, he could do that off the public lists.

In other words, if you are dealing as a liaison for two different cultures, you need to act the part of the culture you are dealing with. For Asian companies, that usually means being very humble and playing the political correctness game.

For dealing with the Linux community, just give out the facts. Saying that a decision has to be made in 4 days, but never say what will happen when the time runs out, as well as pushing, we need to accept the other implementation that DT already has without any technical reason but "it works for a successful company", shows that Luke didn't properly handle the situation at all.

There's no need to have to give an "apology" to the kernel community. Just state what has happened and see what you get. The answer was pretty quick: Device Tree, or show us why their system is better for *everyone*. Also, other workarounds were given too, doing a script for the conversion of fex to DT. But it did seems that Luke wasn't happy with these answers, and only wanted the kernel developers to change their mind. Which he gave no real reason to do so.

Perhaps he's doing a great job at pushing Open Source in otherwise closed companies. But he should also know how to deal with the Open Source developers in a more productive and diplomatic way.