From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2018 08:26:31 +0200 From: Greg KH To: Laurent Pinchart Message-ID: <20180912062631.GB10268@kroah.com> References: <20180911113725.5d91b945@jawa> <20180911193308.GA4429@kroah.com> <2400444.QbA1LOmrIy@avalon> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <2400444.QbA1LOmrIy@avalon> Cc: Alexander Sverdlin , Lukasz Majewski , ksummit-discuss@lists.linuxfoundation.org, Jonas Jensen Subject: Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] Deprecation / Removal of old hardware support List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , On Wed, Sep 12, 2018 at 12:39:34AM +0300, Laurent Pinchart wrote: > Hi Greg, > > On Tuesday, 11 September 2018 22:33:08 EEST Greg KH wrote: > > On Tue, Sep 11, 2018 at 11:37:25AM +0200, Lukasz Majewski wrote: > > > In the kernel community we pose a lot of attention to security (for > > > example the prompt reaction on meltdown/spectre), but in the same time > > > we tend to forget about the "long lived" devices and force their > > > maintainers to use 2.6.x kernels..... (or even 2.4.x). > > > > We care, but really, how much can we do here? > > > > I've been working a lot with the Adroid ecosystem to try to help fix > > their bad habits of "grab a random kernel and ship it and never update > > it" by providing longer lived kernels that they can constantly update > > their devices to. > > > > But their lifetimes is much shorter compared to yours, and I have no > > insight into what kernels are being used, what configurations you all > > care about, and how long you need/want them updated. > > > > Working with really old kernels like you have, without hardware > > available to test is a hard task. If your hardware is in a system like > > kernelci, then you can be sure that any new kernel will work properly > > with your system and then you might not want to have to stay with really > > old kernels that no one can maintain :) > > > > There's a Linux Foundation project, "CIP" that wants to maintain kernels > > for devices like what you are making for 20+ years. They are having the > > problems of not knowing exactly what platforms they wish to support, but > > their goal is good, hopefully they eventually nail something down and we > > can work together. Perhaps you should contact them to try to help solve > > this issue for everyone? > > I may be wrong, but I understand Lukasz's comment as the exact opposite: we > forget about long-lived devices and drop their support while they're still in > active use, forcing vendors to start using old and unsupported kernels. If a > large number of ARMv4(T) devices are still being actively deployed and > maintain, we should treat them as first-class citizens. No, I never want to drop support for anything that anyone is actually using. When I drop support for hardware/protocols, it goes through the staging tree for a few months to see if anyone says anything. If not, then it gets removed. And even then, if someone comes back and says "hey I use that!" it's a simple revert to get it back. The problem is if no one _tells_ us they are using something. And that's not something we can fix without help from the developers/users of those hardware platforms talking to us. thanks, greg k-h