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Date:      Wed, 07 May 1997 12:53:14 -0400
From:      Matt Thomas <matt@3am-software.com>
To:        "Russell L. Carter" <rcarter@consys.com>
Cc:        hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: if_de.c ???? 
Message-ID:  <3.0.1.32.19970507125314.006b90d0@www.3am-software.com>

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At 03:12 PM 5/6/97 -0700, Russell L. Carter wrote:
>
>It *is* a (mostly?) volunteer effort, and it appears from here in 
>the cheap seats that Matt got irritated at something or another, and no
>longer desires to keep de current, for whatever reason.  The thing
>I don't understand is why the cold shoulder given to the 211xxx
>cards by Jordan and DG, among others.  So what if the cpu utilization
>is higher?  These nics are cheap, and not sole source, IMHO a
>real *good* thing.

I don't get paid to maintain the de driver and it is a volunteer effort.
It isn't that I'm irritated it's just that FreeBSD is not my primary
development O/S (NetBSD is).  I don't have the time/environment to track
3 different FreeBSD pools.  As FreeBSD diverges from NetBSD and BSD/OS
it makes tracking FreeBSD even more difficult.

I just finished rewriting the de driver which allows it to support many
more cards than it before (it now uses information in SEEPROM to 
decide on how to drive the card).  It also supports 2 new chips.

I sent a long flame a few ago to one of the NetBSD mailing lists and it
(thankfully) got NetBSD to implement ifmedia support.  The de driver
requires ifmedia and not having it under FreeBSD is a big hurdle in 
getting the new de driver running under FreeBSD.

Note that over the past 6 months I've had to move (work-wise) 4 times
and I've switched jobs once.  I just haven't much time to work on the
de driver.

That's my view on this mess.
-- 
Matt Thomas               Internet:   matt@3am-software.com
3am Software Foundry      WWW URL:    http://www.3am-software.com/bio/matt.html
Westford, MA              Disclaimer: I disavow all knowledge of this message




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