[U-Boot-Users] [PATCH] make MAKEALL more immune to mergeconflicts

[Wolfgang Denk]

Dear David,

in message <12068826.post at talk.nabble.com> you wrote:
> 
> Furthermore, Wolfgang may disagree here, but I really think that only
> reference boards (i.e. boards needed for evaluation of processors etc.)
> should be merged into U-boot's main stream repository. Our boards are just
> variations of the Freescale reference boards, and I guess that's the same
> for many other boards by other companies. I wouldn't want to see ALL these
> boards merged into U-boot. Of course that if one finds a problem, or have an

Grant already replied on this, and I just want to point  out  that  I
absolutely  agree  with him. Just taking a huge amount of code that's
publicly available for free, adding your own little stuff  and  never
returning  it  to  the  community  is something what happens here and
there, but it is definitely NOT the way the free  software  community
works, and in my opinion also pretty unethical.

Even if your board is just a minor variation of some reference  board
it  is  nevertheless  important  to  have  your changes and additions
merged back into the public U-Boot source code. Guess how support for
all that many types of flash chips, RTCs, PHYs, network  controllers,
...  you  nameit ... got into the U-Boot tree? Not because these were
used on reference boards, but on the  plethora  of  different  custom
boards we support.

Guess where allt eh fancy features are  coming  from  -  support  for
graphical  console,  splash screen, net console, VLAN, POST code, ...
came from? None of this was done for  any  reference  board,  it  was
all done for custom boards.


U-Boot would never even be half of what it is today if we added  only
reference boards.



Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

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