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Date: Wed, 23 Oct 2013 11:15:42 -0700
From: Alfred Perlstein <bright@mu.org>
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To: Adrian Chadd <adrian@freebsd.org>
Subject: Re: [rfc] removing the NDISulator
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Cc: "Julian H. Stacey" <jhs@berklix.com>,
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On 10/23/13 11:11 AM, Adrian Chadd wrote:
> On 23 October 2013 11:09, Alfred Perlstein <bright@mu.org> wrote:
>
>
>> 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.
>
> I can pull out examples of this not holding true:
>
> * all the giant locking in drivers
> * all the giant locking in VFS
>
> People did pop up and claim ownership of things they cared about. Some
> stuff died, some stuff didn't. There was enough of a motivation by us to
> kill giant off in these pathways so things could continue to evolve. We
> didn't leave the GIANT crutch in forever.
>
>
Sure, however those drivers and vfs systems were not sustainable and 
holding the kernel back.

What part of the NDISulator actually holds the system back?  I'm saying 
that it seems as if it was conjecture rather than a need.  Is the 
NDISulator giant locked?

Also why the interest in writing drivers so much?  Being able to 
leverage other platform drivers is pretty neat and saves us a ton of work.

-- 
Alfred Perlstein