Re: Ralink RT2500 54g wireless for inclusion?
On Thu, Oct 27, 2005 at 12:51:06AM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 26, 2005 at 04:32:40PM -0600, dann frazier wrote:
> > On Wed, 2005-10-26 at 23:31 +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
> > > On Wed, Oct 26, 2005 at 10:23:33PM +0100, Nick Hill wrote:
> > > > I understand Ralink are the only vendor to have a 54g wireless chipset
> > > > which does not require the host to upload (non-free) firmware.
> > > >
> > > > Ralink have also released software and interface specs, and released a
> > > > driver under the GPL.
> > > >
> > > > The Ralink RT2500 kernel module is included by default with the kernel
> > > > released in Ubuntu 5.10.
> > > >
> > > > This appears to be the only 54g chipset Debian could currently support
> > > > 'out of the box'.
> > > >
> > > > Given that the ralink seem particularly free software friendly, the
> > > > chipset is cheap and common, and the driver is widely understood to work
> > > > well, are there any good reasons not to include the driver module with
> > > > the standard debian kernel?
> > >
> > > Well, there is a politic of allowing only stuff that goes upstream, which is a
> > > politic i am not really sure i am all that fond of, but well,
> >
> > Though it could very well exist as a kernel-module package until it is
> > available upstream, if someone is willing to package it.
>
> Well, the problem is that the outside-of-tree modules are rather a pain to us,
> since we have no good procedure for kernel abi changes and outside-of-tree
> modules, and it requires more work to maintain them, and it is difficult to
> find good maintainers for those packages.
That is preceicely the reason code should be merged upstream,
not patched onto the Debian kernel. Do you want to wear that pain?
--
Horms
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