Re: Unmaintained Driver Deprecation
On Tue, Jan 29, 2008 at 08:53:34AM -0500, David Nusinow wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I think it's time to start dealing with driver deprecation on a more
> active level. I'm not sure how far off server 1.5 is, but I'd like to be
> well ahead of it in dealing with the changes it brings. It should be
> obvious now that almost all the input drivers are going away, and a few of
> the video drivers as well. My feeling is that we should give people a
> chance to try and save these drivers though, so we should work up a mail to
> debian-devel-announce detailing why these drivers will be going away, and
> what people can do about it.
>
> This week I'll come up with a list of the drivers that haven't been
> ported to the new input and pci-rework frameworks and also compose a draft
> of the mail. I'll send it here for comments so we can make sure it's well
> written before it's sent. If you guys have any thoughts on the matter, or
> suggestions for writing the mail, please let me know.
Thanks, it's good to hear options are being left open for getting the
wayward drivers caught up in time. I do have a couple suggestions:
Include a link to a page describing in general the type of work needed
to bring a driver up to date. This will both give them the scope of
work they'd be committing to, and highlight the objective(s) they should
focus on.
Point to a discussion forum of some sort where people interested in the
same driver can get in contact and potentially collaborate on efforts.
I can also forward the letter on to the busdev type folks at Canonical,
as they frequently bring up contacts that wish to use the second or
third tier drivers. I don't know if their drivers of interest will be
on the list, but it would be a good chance to raise awareness that a bit
of development involvement from these user companies could help improve
their collective situation significantly.
Bryce
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