Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] Deprecation / Removal of old hardware support

[Laurent Pinchart <laurent.pinchart@ideasonboard.com>]

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.

-- 
Regards,

Laurent Pinchart