Re: Why linux is so stupid with hardware drivers?

From: Grant Edwards (grante_at_visi.com)
Date: 05/10/04 

Date: 10 May 2004 18:20:38 GMT

On 2004-05-10, Kasper Dupont <kasperd@daimi.au.dk> wrote:
> Grant Edwards wrote:
>
>> Yea, I've suffered through that as well. One driver I
>> maintained did have an old, non-working version included in
>> the kernel source tree. That driver hadn't worked for years,
>> and it caused nothing but problems.
>
> Did you report the bug?
> Did you submit a patch?

Nobody could figure out who to report it to or where to send
the patch. The orginal author had gone incommunicado, there was
a sourceforge project that had gone stale. The only person who
did claim some responsibility for that area of the kernel
didn't seem interested in fixing "stable" stuff. He was busy
redesigning the infrastructure in the 2.5 kernel and already
and didn't want to hear about fixes to the "old" driver. He
had a "new" version of the driver that had been modified to
"work" (IOW compile) with the new-style kernel infrastructure.

> Did the old version still work for some people?

I don't believe so. 

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  What I want to find
                                  at               out is -- do parrots know
                               visi.com            much about Astro-Turf?

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