From: Linus Torvalds on


On Fri, 11 Dec 2009, Dave Airlie wrote:
>
> I'm going to see what Ben can do with a firmware loader and the ctxprogs,
> we can send a patch that contains all the other bits of the driver, however
> since the ctxprogs aren't currently something we can add Signed-off-by to,
> someone else will have to endeavour to provide them some other way.

Hey, thanks. This was actually the first time I got the feeling that you
acknowledged that we should strive for it to be merged at all. I literally
feel better for just that.

Linus
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From: Kyle McMartin on
On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 04:32:56PM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > "patches welcome"
>
> The problem is that I have never even heard a Red Hat or Fedora person
> actually acknoledge that yes, they should be trying to upstream it.
>
> Have Red Hat and Fedora just decided that "upstream first" simply doesn't
> matter any more? Because quite frankly, that was kind of the feeling I
> came away with from the Kernel summit.
>

Well, given that none of the Fedora kernel people were able to attend
this year for a variety of reasons, this is an interesting revelation to
me, I wasn't aware I thought this.

I, for one, would very much like nouveau to be upstream. It would
certainly make my life easier not having to worry about subtlely
breaking graphics adapters I can't test whenever we rebase to new git
changes in the DRM. Thankfully Ben and Dave have been ninja at dealing
with it, otherwise I probably would have punted it by now.

> It's like they _want_ to keep it internal.
>

regards, Kyle

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From: Alan Cox on
> I realize that you have some emotional attachments to Red Hat, but ask
> yourself (and answer honestly): what would you think if some random other
> distro was packaging tens of thousands of lines of kernel code and not
> apparently working at trying to get them upstream?

Like Ubuntu does for a load of stuff and did for years ? I'd like to see
stuff get upstream yes. The point you seem to be missing is you are
ranting at the wrong people. I want to see it upstream too, but if you
must shout at people do it productively at the right target.

I would be cross if they were controlling and hiding it, but its sitting
in a public repository, its maintained by a collection of people one of
whom happens to work for Red Hat and anyone can grab it. It's vastly
easier to get hold of than the userspace for some of the stuff in kernel.

However the fundamental point stands. The only people who can sign it off
are the people who wrote it. Those are the rules. Red Hat didn't write the
code, Red Hat cannot sign it off however much you rant at them. You also
previously said you don't want to merge stuff when the authors don't want
it merged. If you like I can also dig out some Torvalds quotes about not
wanting to dictate to distros.

If you want to progress this then

- Starting talking to the project *authors*
- Help them decide what to do about the firmware stuff
- If need be get the Linux Foundation, Red Hat and other relevant lawyers
and people on a phone call with you so that legal issues can get
discussed and you can shout at them as necessary too.

I am not privy to what the lawyers think on this one. But I'd bet that
the only way you'll get a full answer is in conjunction with lawyers
speaking to lawyers, and the only way you'll get a sign off is when the
lawyers say "yes". Anything else would be rather irresponsible.

> And it's possible that other distros are doing the same thing. I happen to
> know that Fedora does it (and has been doing it for at least a year),
> because I happen to have an Intel development machine that runs Fedora and

F11 certainly shipped some bits of it for 2D support. I am not sure if
F10 shipped a purely userspace set up. Neither had it enabled as the
default driver - they used "nv" or "vesa" depending upon the card.

> was shipped by Intel with an nVidia card (and has a power supply that
> craps out if you don't use several hundred watts of power, so I can't
> change it to something more power-efficient - seriously).

Alan
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From: David Miller on
From: Alan Cox <alan(a)lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2009 09:18:43 +0000

> However the fundamental point stands. The only people who can sign it off
> are the people who wrote it. Those are the rules. Red Hat didn't write the
> code, Red Hat cannot sign it off however much you rant at them. You also
> previously said you don't want to merge stuff when the authors don't want
> it merged.

I agree with a lot of what you say.

However, one point remains is that we were told, by Dave Airlie, that
they didn't want this code merged because the one person being paid to
work on it "would be overwhelmed" if the code went upstream.

I distinctly remember this being mentioned at the kernel summit.

And you know what? That kind of excuse pisses me off too :-)
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From: Stephane Marchesin on
On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 00:58, Alan Cox <alan(a)lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> wrote:
>> But not only is Fedora not following the rules,
>
> You changed the rules. You require a Signed-off-by:. Fedora can no more
> add a signed off by than you can. It's not their code nor Red Hat's code
> any more than they "own" the kernel because they pay someone to work on
> it.
>
>> See above. It's not you. It's Fedora. If Fedora hadn't merged Nouveau and
>> shipped it, I wouldn't care.
>
> And zillions of Nvidia users would have been worse off.
>
> It's really simple: if you want to merge it *you* pull it and sign it off.
> If you aren't prepared to do that then ask why Fedora should, its not
> their code either.
>

So what, if someone outside RedHat is ok to sign it off, it can go
into staging? If it's that simple I don't mind signing it off
(including the dubious bits), I can take the blame if that helps
things move forward.

Stephane
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