From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Oct 23 18:09:14 2013 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [8.8.178.115]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ADH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7D961BEC; Wed, 23 Oct 2013 18:09:14 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from bright@mu.org) Received: from elvis.mu.org (elvis.mu.org [192.203.228.196]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 67045223E; Wed, 23 Oct 2013 18:09:14 +0000 (UTC) Received: from Alfreds-MacBook-Pro-9.local (c-76-21-10-192.hsd1.ca.comcast.net [76.21.10.192]) by elvis.mu.org (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 093A61A3CC9; Wed, 23 Oct 2013 11:09:14 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <526810DB.20705@mu.org> Date: Wed, 23 Oct 2013 11:09:31 -0700 From: Alfred Perlstein User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.7; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/24.0.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: John Baldwin , freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: [rfc] removing the NDISulator References: <5265878B.1050809@yandex.ru> <201310212146.r9LLkqZ1044966@fire.js.berklix.net> <201310231023.32351.jhb@freebsd.org> In-Reply-To: <201310231023.32351.jhb@freebsd.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Adrian Chadd , "Andrey V. Elsukov" , "Julian H. Stacey" , "freebsd-wireless@freebsd.org" X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 23 Oct 2013 18:09:14 -0000 On 10/23/13 7:23 AM, John Baldwin wrote: > On Monday, October 21, 2013 6:29:24 pm Adrian Chadd wrote: >> The NDISulator is a crutch from a time when there wasn't _any_ real >> alternative. >> >> There are plenty of alternatives now. What's lacking is desire and >> person-power. But the datasheets are there, or the vendor code has been >> released, or there's linux/otherbsd drivers. >> >> Leaving it in there is just delaying the inevitable - drivers need to be >> fixed, ported, or reverse engineered. >> >> This is going to upset users in the same way that eliminating any other >> transition/sideways compatibility layer upsets users. But as I said, the >> path forward is fixing up the lack of stable drivers, not simply supporting >> some crutch. >> >> If there are drivers that people absolutely need fixed then they should >> stand up and say "hey, I really would like X to work better!" and then >> follow it up with some encouraging incentives. Right now the NDISulator >> lets people work _around_ this by having something that kind of works for >> them but it doesn't improve our general driver / stack ecosystems. > Eh, having taken a stab at porting the bwl blob already, I would strongly > oppose removing NDIS. If you do that I will just stop using my netbook > with a Broadcom part altogether as I wouldn't be able to use it to try to > test bwl changes. The NDIS thing is a bit hackish, but it is quite useful > for a lot of folks. > I have to agree. Deprecation != motivation. -- Alfred Perlstein