wifi: orphan brcm80211 broadcom drivers

The maintainers listed can no longer meet the expectations
of the community. Hence changing the status to Orphan.

Signed-off-by: Arend van Spriel <arend.vanspriel@broadcom.com>
---
When joining Broadcom 13 years ago and assigned to work on
upstreaming our wifi drivers it was a fun job. Getting it
in shape to remedy John Linville's eye-ball cancer from the
first look at it and adding stuff after getting it out of
staging with Greg's blessing. Setting up a Jenkins CI rig to
nightly test the chips we support. Refactoring the driver to
pave the road for new features.

Those days it was backed up by the company because there were
paying customers demanding it. When that support ended I decided
to hang on and play my role as a maintainer because I cared and
could not let go. That was probably a mistake from which I can
only learn. Hopefully I can stay involved as a valued reviewer,
but I somehow doubt that. Too much emotions stir that I need to
vent, but it would only put more oil on this stupid flame war.

Regards,
Arend
---
 MAINTAINERS | 7 ++-----
 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)

--
2.32.0

Arend van Spriel <arend.vanspriel@broadcom.com> writes:

> The maintainers listed can no longer meet the expectations
> of the community. Hence changing the status to Orphan.
>
> Signed-off-by: Arend van Spriel <arend.vanspriel@broadcom.com>
> ---
> When joining Broadcom 13 years ago and assigned to work on
> upstreaming our wifi drivers it was a fun job. Getting it
> in shape to remedy John Linville's eye-ball cancer from the
> first look at it and adding stuff after getting it out of
> staging with Greg's blessing. Setting up a Jenkins CI rig to
> nightly test the chips we support. Refactoring the driver to
> pave the road for new features.
>
> Those days it was backed up by the company because there were
> paying customers demanding it. When that support ended I decided
> to hang on and play my role as a maintainer because I cared and
> could not let go. That was probably a mistake from which I can
> only learn. Hopefully I can stay involved as a valued reviewer,
> but I somehow doubt that. Too much emotions stir that I need to
> vent, but it would only put more oil on this stupid flame war.

I am so sad about this but I fully understand your decision. You have
the best knowledge of Broadcom devices and you were involved with
brcm80211 from the beginning. I can guess how difficult lately it has
been for you to find time for upstream work but even still you replied
to my mails and tried to support the community the best you can, which I
appreciated so much. Everyone else in the corporate world usually just
ignore, you did not do that.

Your mail made me think a lot about what has happened over the ~15 years
I have been involved with wireless. And this is not fun anymore, this is
more like a business with requirements and demands coming from
everywhere.

On 12/20/2023 5:21 PM, Kalle Valo wrote:
> Arend van Spriel <arend.vanspriel@broadcom.com> writes:
> 
>> The maintainers listed can no longer meet the expectations
>> of the community. Hence changing the status to Orphan.
>>
>> Signed-off-by: Arend van Spriel <arend.vanspriel@broadcom.com>
>> ---
>> When joining Broadcom 13 years ago and assigned to work on
>> upstreaming our wifi drivers it was a fun job. Getting it
>> in shape to remedy John Linville's eye-ball cancer from the
>> first look at it and adding stuff after getting it out of
>> staging with Greg's blessing. Setting up a Jenkins CI rig to
>> nightly test the chips we support. Refactoring the driver to
>> pave the road for new features.
>>
>> Those days it was backed up by the company because there were
>> paying customers demanding it. When that support ended I decided
>> to hang on and play my role as a maintainer because I cared and
>> could not let go. That was probably a mistake from which I can
>> only learn. Hopefully I can stay involved as a valued reviewer,
>> but I somehow doubt that. Too much emotions stir that I need to
>> vent, but it would only put more oil on this stupid flame war.
> 
> I am so sad about this but I fully understand your decision. You have
> the best knowledge of Broadcom devices and you were involved with
> brcm80211 from the beginning. I can guess how difficult lately it has
> been for you to find time for upstream work but even still you replied
> to my mails and tried to support the community the best you can, which I
> appreciated so much. Everyone else in the corporate world usually just
> ignore, you did not do that.

Hi Kalle,

Maybe I should reconsider, because it feels a bit like high school and 
the bullies won. I agreed that I can not meet expectations and the main 
aspect being testing patch series on fair amount of devices. Do you 
think we can address that with some help? For instance by reaching out 
to several people in the community that use brcmfmac and ask them if 
they are willing to regularly test on wireless-testing. My experience 
with community members is not so great as they tend to loose interest 
and move on, but it may be worth a try. Let me know what you think.

Regards,
Arend

(sorry for the really late reply, I was on a long vacation)

Arend van Spriel <arend.vanspriel@broadcom.com> writes:

> On 12/20/2023 5:21 PM, Kalle Valo wrote:
>
>> I am so sad about this but I fully understand your decision. You have
>> the best knowledge of Broadcom devices and you were involved with
>> brcm80211 from the beginning. I can guess how difficult lately it has
>> been for you to find time for upstream work but even still you
>> replied to my mails and tried to support the community the best you
>> can, which I appreciated so much. Everyone else in the corporate
>> world usually just ignore, you did not do that.
>
> Hi Kalle,
>
> Maybe I should reconsider, because it feels a bit like high school and
> the bullies won. I agreed that I can not meet expectations and the
> main aspect being testing patch series on fair amount of devices.

Yes, please reconsider! I didn't apply your patch because I was hoping I
could still convince you to continue maintaining it :)

I fully understand the challenges of maintaining a huge driver like
brcm80211: no proper documentation available, several companies
involved, a plethora of firmware branches which might work a bit
different and so many hardware variants.

> Do you think we can address that with some help? For instance by
> reaching out to several people in the community that use brcmfmac and
> ask them if they are willing to regularly test on wireless-testing. My
> experience with community members is not so great as they tend to
> loose interest and move on, but it may be worth a try. Let me know
> what you think.

I definitely think that getting a small community around brcm80211 would
be beneficial. For example, a good start would be to create a dedicated
list for brcm80211 where people can discuss about anything from testing
to developing patches and all between. lists.infradead.org is one good
place and there's also lists.linux.dev.

Let me know if there's anything I can help with. I have also CCed people
who expressed interest in helping brcm80211 development before the
holidays.

On Sat, 13 Jan 2024 at 16:27, Kalle Valo <kvalo@kernel.org> wrote:
>
> (sorry for the really late reply, I was on a long vacation)
>
> Arend van Spriel <arend.vanspriel@broadcom.com> writes:
>
> > On 12/20/2023 5:21 PM, Kalle Valo wrote:
> >
> >> I am so sad about this but I fully understand your decision. You have
> >> the best knowledge of Broadcom devices and you were involved with
> >> brcm80211 from the beginning. I can guess how difficult lately it has
> >> been for you to find time for upstream work but even still you
> >> replied to my mails and tried to support the community the best you
> >> can, which I appreciated so much. Everyone else in the corporate
> >> world usually just ignore, you did not do that.
> >
> > Hi Kalle,
> >
> > Maybe I should reconsider, because it feels a bit like high school and
> > the bullies won. I agreed that I can not meet expectations and the
> > main aspect being testing patch series on fair amount of devices.
>
> Yes, please reconsider! I didn't apply your patch because I was hoping I
> could still convince you to continue maintaining it :)
>

+1 on @Arend van Spriel reconsidering.

We need another maintainer also though, for the amount of users of
this code, this is undermaintained.

CC'ing @Izabela Bakollari who has a Raspberry Pi 4 coming in the mail
who offered to help test patches, help with maintenance, etc. She has
been in contact with @Daniel Berlin .

> I fully understand the challenges of maintaining a huge driver like
> brcm80211: no proper documentation available, several companies
> involved, a plethora of firmware branches which might work a bit
> different and so many hardware variants.
>
> > Do you think we can address that with some help? For instance by
> > reaching out to several people in the community that use brcmfmac and
> > ask them if they are willing to regularly test on wireless-testing. My
> > experience with community members is not so great as they tend to
> > loose interest and move on, but it may be worth a try. Let me know
> > what you think.
>
> I definitely think that getting a small community around brcm80211 would
> be beneficial. For example, a good start would be to create a dedicated
> list for brcm80211 where people can discuss about anything from testing
> to developing patches and all between. lists.infradead.org is one good
> place and there's also lists.linux.dev.
>
> Let me know if there's anything I can help with. I have also CCed people
> who expressed interest in helping brcm80211 development before the
> holidays.
>
> --
> https://patchwork.kernel.org/project/linux-wireless/list/
>
> https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/developers/documentation/submittingpatches
>