From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon Feb 3 18:42:52 2003 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B784B37B401 for ; Mon, 3 Feb 2003 18:42:50 -0800 (PST) Received: from stork.mail.pas.earthlink.net (stork.mail.pas.earthlink.net [207.217.120.188]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2752B43F3F for ; Mon, 3 Feb 2003 18:42:50 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from tlambert2@mindspring.com) Received: from pool0354.cvx21-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net ([209.179.193.99] helo=mindspring.com) by stork.mail.pas.earthlink.net with asmtp (SSLv3:RC4-MD5:128) (Exim 3.33 #1) id 18ft2e-0000eq-00; Mon, 03 Feb 2003 18:42:33 -0800 Message-ID: <3E3F26A7.411C73D7@mindspring.com> Date: Mon, 03 Feb 2003 18:34:15 -0800 From: Terry Lambert X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.79 [en] (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Nat Lanza Cc: Gordon Tetlow , Dag-Erling Smorgrav , David Yeske , hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: End-Of-Life announcement for M-Systems DiskOnChipdriver("fla"). References: <20030202222042.3444.qmail@web13503.mail.yahoo.com> <3E3EAF82.E0F19A11@mindspring.com> <20030203224802.GM98559@roark.gnf.org> <3E3EF613.DBA56F01@mindspring.com> <1044324816.2300.0.camel@gunboat.premodern.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-ELNK-Trace: b1a02af9316fbb217a47c185c03b154d40683398e744b8a43afc172678798560eae620396bff4966350badd9bab72f9c350badd9bab72f9c350badd9bab72f9c Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Nat Lanza wrote: > > But if that's the argument for removing it, then it's probably > > time to remove the ability to use non-DMA IDE drives from the > > ATA driver, and kill all the ethernet drivers that have alignment > > requirements for their DMA engines, making m_pullup copies > > necessary, and yanking all drivers that do destructive probes, > > and getting rid of the F00F workaround, and yanking all support > > for things hung off the floppy controller, etc. etc.. > > > > All that could be justified using exactly the same argument. > > It's great to hear you volunteering to maintain this driver, Terry. > > Thanks so much! Code that works doesn't *need* a maintainer. Neither does it need to be deprecated. When it quits working in a non-obvious way (e.g. not as a result of someone changing an interface out from under it, and failing to fix it up with the rest of the code), a maintainer will step forward and volunteer by submitting a patch to un-break it, or it will be time to deprecate it. Worst case, someone who cares very much about it will not have the skill to fix it, and will hire someone to fix it for them. That's how Open Source projects work. Arbitrarily diking out working code is bad policy. -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message