Re: auto-negotiation | force fixed

On Fri, 1 Nov 2002, Frank Lenaerts wrote:

> Actually, I've used some of your drivers already before (via-rhine,
> eepro100 and now I'll also try the myson driver). I wonder when your
> redesign will be incorporated into the kernel tree;-)

The answer is "never", and the reason is strictly politics.

I proposed the fully implemented and documented interface back in late
summer of 1999.  At that point I had written more hot-swap Linux drivers
(in the form of PCMCIA and CardBus, which is a harsher environment that
simple hot-swap PCI) than everyone else.  Not "more than anyone", more
than all others summed.

Instead of accepting that changes, my improvements were ignored in favor
of a too-simple interface, where the API needed to be changed every week
or so.  After all, a patch a week show that the development is active,
right?  Don't we all want constantly changing systems?  And a few of the
patches might actually fix more bugs than they introduce.

-- 
Donald Becker				[email protected]
Scyld Computing Corporation		http://www.scyld.com
410 Severn Ave. Suite 210		Scyld Beowulf cluster system
Annapolis MD 21403			410-990-9993