[lvc-project] On brcm80211 maintenance and support

[Hector Martin]

On 2023/10/10 5:22, Arend Van Spriel wrote:
> On 10/6/2023 2:21 PM, Kalle Valo wrote:
>> Julian Calaby <julian.calaby at gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> Hi Dmitry,
>>>
>>> (relevant people and lists CC'd)
>>>
>>> On Fri, Oct 6, 2023 at 3:16 AM Dmitry Antipov <dmantipov at yandex.ru> 
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Kalle,
>>>>
>>>> what's an actual status of brcm80211 driver? It seems
>>>> that the relevant MAINTAINERS entries are no longer
>>>> useful, and [1] states that Broadcom is just "disappeared".
>>>
>>> Arend hasn't posted since February:
>>> https://lore.kernel.org/linux-wireless/63f72045-e51d-d9a4-a0ed-c221bcdcee03@gmail.com/
>>>
>>> Franky is still reviewing things as of early August:
>>> https://lore.kernel.org/linux-wireless/CA+8PC_evb-6Y3dKnAN4BN=ODEVxY5-cDb6Lc72u0j1WBtx7p1A@mail.gmail.com/
>>>
>>> Hante hasn't posted since 2018:
>>> https://lore.kernel.org/linux-wireless/4f6223b8083ed69432493a37d4f45b69@mail.gmail.com/
>>>
>>> Hector Martin has a bunch of Apple-specific patches downstream in the
>>> Asahi Linux kernel and has been looking for guidance on how to
>>> upstream it without any real answers:
>>> https://lore.kernel.org/linux-wireless/181af6e9-799d-b730-dc14-ee2de2541f35@marcan.st/
>>>
>>> There's also speculation that the Raspberry Pi people have downstream
>>> patches too, but I haven't been able to find anything concrete in a
>>> very brief search.
>>
>> Thanks for the research, that is helpful.
>>
>>> Finally, the Cypress / Infineon people appear to be uninterested in
>>> discussing the driver.
>>>
>>> I think it's pretty safe to say that this driver is nearly
>>> unmaintained by Broadcom, definitely unmaintained by Cypress /
>>> Infineon and Arend is unable to answer questions relating to anything
>>> beyond the code as-written.
>>>
>>> Kalle, should this driver get orphaned?
>>
>> We definitely need to consider that but let's first wait for Arend to
>> comment.
> 
> Using my personal email account to comment. Broadcom has pulled away 
> most resources from the brcm80211 drivers as there is no business 
> interest for it and it turned into a one-fifth man show as I was granted 
> to work one day a week on brcm80211. Nice theory but in practice other 
> work always takes priority. So "nearly unmaintained" is no exaggeration. 
> I probably can not meet the expectations some people in the community 
> have regarding driver maintainers, but I can still review patch 
> submissions although I should keep a better eye on the list to do that. 
> It would not be my choice to abandon brcm80211, but if my contributions 
> are considered insufficient than I will accept that fact.
> 
> Ever since Infineon took over Cypress wifi business things turned quiet 
> soon. Their website still claims brcmfmac is the driver to use. Earlier 
> this year I did have contact with them to hear whether they were 
> committed to the driver. At least I got an answer, but not much more 
> than that.
> 

Okay, so pragmatically, this needs a new maintainer. Would you be okay 
with adding myself as a co-maintainer? You could leave yourself as a 
maintainer or downgrade yourself to reviewer.

We should also remove the other two Broadcom folks from the maintainers 
list if they are effectively gone.

I expect my patch submissions to be reviewed by someone (in general); if 
we do this, that could be anyone (not just you), therefore unblocking 
upstreaming of Apple hardware related changes.

 From my point of view, pragmatically, the most useful things that a 
Broadcom employee can do to help this driver out without being an 
outright maintainer are:

- Answering questions (about firmwares, compats, hardware revisions, 
debugging, etc.) in a reasonably timely manner
- Testing on a wider variety of hardware

If someone can at least validate that my firmware version gates and such 
are done properly, then there's a chance we won't randomly break other 
chips. If someone can actively test on other hardware, even better. If I 
end up being the only one keeping the driver afloat, as I mentioned in 
my other reply, all I can promise is decent support on chips Apple uses.

- Hector