RFC: removal of dabusb driver from Linux Kernel

From our research, it seems that a variant of the driver is/where used on some hardware

Hi Deti and Georg,

The dabusb driver at the Linux kernel seems to be pretty much unmaintained. Since 2006, when I moved it to /drivers/media, I received no patches from the driver authors. All the patches we've got since then were usual trivial fixes and a few other drivers correcting some core API changes.

Also, I never found anyone with the hardware, in order to test if the driver keeps working. Is there any commercial hardware using it?

With the removal of BKL, the driver will need fixes or will likely be removed.

So, if you still care about the driver, please contact me asap. Otherwise, I'll move it to drivers/staging and mark it to die for 2.6.38.

Thanks,
Mauro

Hi,

I'm responsible for the multimedia support at Linux Kernel. I tried to contact the authors of the DABUSB driver back in september some time ago without any luck.

We're considering the removal of dabusb driver from Linux Kernel, due to a few reasons:

1) The driver is for an engineering sample only which was never sold as a commercial product.
2) The DAB API is completely undocumented and was never reviewed. Should other DAB drivers ever appear, then I'd rather start from scratch defining an API then continue this dubious API.

From our research, it seems that a variant of the driver is/where used on some hardware
developed by you and used on some Terratec hardware (Dr Box 1).

If we don't have any answer from you, we'll schedule the driver to be removed from Linux kernel on the next version, as we were unable to identify anyone using the hardware supported at the kernel driver.

Thanks,
Mauro

Em 19-09-2010 09:06, Mauro Carvalho Chehab escreveu:

Quoted 17 lines

Hi Deti and Georg,

The dabusb driver at the Linux kernel seems to be pretty much unmaintained. Since 2006, when I moved it to /drivers/media, I received no patches from the driver authors. All the patches we've got since then were usual trivial fixes and a few other drivers correcting some core API changes.

Also, I never found anyone with the hardware, in order to test if the driver keeps working. Is there any commercial hardware using it?

With the removal of BKL, the driver will need fixes or will likely be removed.

So, if you still care about the driver, please contact me asap. Otherwise, I'll move it to drivers/staging and mark it to die for 2.6.38.

Thanks,
Mauro

Hello,

sorry for not answering in time. Please feel free to remove this piece of unusable code from the kernel.

Deti

Quoted 44 lines · Mauro Carvalho Chehab

Hi,

I'm responsible for the multimedia support at Linux Kernel. I tried to contact the authors of the DABUSB driver back in september some time ago without any luck.

We're considering the removal of dabusb driver from Linux Kernel, due to a few reasons:

1) The driver is for an engineering sample only which was never sold as a commercial product.
2) The DAB API is completely undocumented and was never reviewed. Should other DAB drivers ever appear, then I'd rather start from scratch defining an API then continue this dubious API.

From our research, it seems that a variant of the driver is/where used on some hardware
developed by you and used on some Terratec hardware (Dr Box 1).

If we don't have any answer from you, we'll schedule the driver to be removed from Linux kernel on the next version, as we were unable to identify anyone using the hardware supported at the kernel driver.

Thanks,
Mauro

Em 19-09-2010 09:06, Mauro Carvalho Chehab escreveu:

Quoted 17 lines

Hi Deti and Georg,

The dabusb driver at the Linux kernel seems to be pretty much unmaintained. Since 2006, when I moved it to /drivers/media, I received no patches from the driver authors. All the patches we've got since then were usual trivial fixes and a few other drivers correcting some core API changes.

Also, I never found anyone with the hardware, in order to test if the driver keeps working. Is there any commercial hardware using it?

With the removal of BKL, the driver will need fixes or will likely be removed.

So, if you still care about the driver, please contact me asap. Otherwise, I'll move it to drivers/staging and mark it to die for 2.6.38.

Thanks,
Mauro

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