A lot of Linux drivers are like this - just one or two people maintaining them. They usually eventually mainline the driver rather than having a separate Git repo though.
It’s mind boggling just thinking that things like this depend on the effort of one or two guys… while on the other hand, it’s not so uncommon that a team of engineers and developers fails to deliver a working (mostly) bugfree product.
I think management is who is responsible for the shitty decisions, as always… and, in general, just holding the team back.
The thing with drivers is that the hardware they’re written for doesn’t really change. A particular network card is always going to behave the same way. Once the driver works well, it’s pretty much complete, and the only changes that are needed are bug fixes, updates to handle new firmware, or adjustments if the kernel changes some implementation detail of how drivers are used. There could be months or years between updates to the driver.
Some manufacturers have great first-party Linux support. Intel is a good example - they contribute a lot of code to the kernel, and their drivers are maintained by employees.
A lot of Linux drivers are like this - just one or two people maintaining them. They usually eventually mainline the driver rather than having a separate Git repo though.
It’s mind boggling just thinking that things like this depend on the effort of one or two guys… while on the other hand, it’s not so uncommon that a team of engineers and developers fails to deliver a working (mostly) bugfree product.
I think management is who is responsible for the shitty decisions, as always… and, in general, just holding the team back.
The thing with drivers is that the hardware they’re written for doesn’t really change. A particular network card is always going to behave the same way. Once the driver works well, it’s pretty much complete, and the only changes that are needed are bug fixes, updates to handle new firmware, or adjustments if the kernel changes some implementation detail of how drivers are used. There could be months or years between updates to the driver.
Some manufacturers have great first-party Linux support. Intel is a good example - they contribute a lot of code to the kernel, and their drivers are maintained by employees.
Obligatory
What’s the deal with Nebraska? Are people from there like really polite and helpful?
There’s nothing to do in Nebraska except drink and maintain Linux drivers