Re: [PATCH 5/5] net-next:asix: v2 update VERSION only

On Tue, 15 Nov 2011 17:37:47 PST, Grant Grundler said:

Upstream drivers are routinely back ported to distro releases. Version
is the primary means for a vendor (like ASIX) to determine what was
back ported. Distro maintainers and 1st tier support organizations
also need to track versions and "ethtool -i" is the canonical way to
look this up on a running system.

Oh, OK.  I figured the distro would know what they backported based on the
kernel version they generated - I forgot that sometimes users will bypass the
distro and go to the upstream vendor, and you may not know what their distro
had done...