Re: All your drivers are belong to us [was WARNING: mutexes are preferredfor single holder semaphores]

On Wed, 7 May 2008 17:42:51 -0400
Sean MacLennan [off-list ref] wrote:

On Wed, 07 May 2008 16:36:30 +0200
"Detlev Zundel" [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

It also happened that a driver once posted for what the customer
thought was a completely specific device of his own today supports
lots of different boards from at least four different manufacturers."

The wording is of course not exact but I hope I caught the spirit of
what Greg wanted to say.  So yes, please post the driver - maybe Greg
KH will tunnel it into mainline...

I agree with the sentiment. However, it is hard enough to get
legitimate drivers into the kernel. The drivers I mentioned do not
come close to following the Linux kernel coding spec.

Here's the cool part.  There's this Linux driver project:

http://www.linuxdriverproject.org/twiki/bin/view

where they can take drivers like that and clean them up.  At least to a
reasonable degree.  The benefit for you is that once it's cleaned up,
it can go into the mainline kernel and it will just be there in future
releases.  Helpful when you update.

Now, I can't say I've personally ever used that project but its mission
does seem pretty targeted towards groups that want to do the right
thing with respect to drivers.  Maybe you could give it a shot and tell
others about the experience.

josh