Subject: Re: [PATCH net-next v13 11/16] net: dsa: mt7530: use external PCS driver

From: "Russell King (Oracle)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2023 23:11:58 +0000

On Wed, Mar 15, 2023 at 12:34:13AM +0200, Vladimir Oltean wrote:
> But the mt7530 maintainers have gone
> pretty silent as of late, and I, as a fallback maintainer with no
> hardware, have had to send 2 bug fixes to the mt7530 and 1 to the
> mtk_eth_soc driver in the past month, to address the reports.

That's an under-statement, and not just the DSA driver, but the
ethernet driver too. It's been years trying to get the attention
of anyone to sort out the pre-March 2020 crud in this driver, and
no one seems to care, and none of the alleged maintainers bother
replying.

I don't believe anyone who claims to be a maintainer for either the
DSA or Ethernet driver has commented on any of my patches or provided
any review.

In my mind, these drivers do not have maintainers.

What I have to resort to is spotting potential victims^wtesters on
the mailing lists to try stuff out for me - which is really not
how this should work.

It seems to me that this is the old "chuck code over the wall into
mainline, then do a runner" approach to kernel maintenance.

So, honestly, the sooner these drivers get proper maintainers, the
better - and if someone wants to step up to do that amongst those
who are involved in the current work, I'm all for that - it would
be a hell of a lot better than the current situation.

-- 
RMK's Patch system: https://www.armlinux.org.uk/developer/patches/
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