Re: Ralink RT2500 54g wireless for inclusion?

[Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr>]

On Thu, Oct 27, 2005 at 01:32:03PM +0900, Horms wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 27, 2005 at 12:51:06AM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
> > 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?

Well, my impression is that code like that will make it upstream in any case,
it is a plain driver and many people are using it. it may not be upstream yet
for a variety of reasons, like the code not being quite top-notch yet, or the
maintainer not really having the strength or the knowledge to do it right, or
it being at odd with the upstream release plans or whatever. This is i believe
a temporary issue, and differs from other wide-ranging patches which will
never make it upstream and can create a lot of brokeness, and which we will
have to maintain forever.

Furthermore, us having it in our tree may help testing it, and facilitate
upstream integration or such.

So i think our policy of "if it is not upstream, we won't take it", may be too
extreme, especially for stuff like this, which are drivers for hardware our
user need, and especially for drivers done by licencing-friendly companies
like ralink, we should push it more strongly, as a position statement or
something.

Friendly,

Sven Luther