[U-Boot] [PATCH 3/4] efikamx: update to Efika MX Smarttop and Smartbook boards

[Marek Vasut]

Dear Matt Sealey,

> On Sat, Aug 18, 2012 at 10:50 AM, Stefano Babic <sbabic at denx.de> wrote:
> > On 17/08/2012 20:19, Matt Sealey wrote:
> > 
> > Anyway, who will maintain the efikas in future ? Marek, do you hold it,
> > or Matt will take this job ?
> 
> I'll do it but I doubt I'm going to be around as much as Marek. What
> I'm a little fearful of is having patches try and hit the Efika stuff
> and me not having much time that day to review, they either stagnate
> or get accepted anyway breaking something.

So your commercial QA has to arrive at the RC stage and fix it if needed ... 
every around 3-4 months.

> I can't test every patch
> everyone sends, we just want to be sure it's hit a certain level of
> quality and solve some of the issues we hacked around at the Freescale
> BSP level are in mainline as we simply can't use the BSP version
> anymore (doesn't support bootz or device trees...)
> 
> > In last case I would like to see a patch for the MAINTAINER file.
> 
> I'll submit it when I feel like we're actually being "forced" to
> maintain it. I am of two minds; I will be the responsible party if
> needs be, but that means Efika MX stuff is going to be commercially
> driven by our needs (i.e. runs our boot scripts, supports the board
> the way we dictate (no video, no usb keyboards..), no changes to
> support "developers" if they are simply being too needy), and if it
> doesn't suit us in terms of breaking something or changing behaviour
> wildly, we'll NACK the crap out of it.

I think you need to understand that FOSS is a cooperative effort. It is not any 
commercial crap which you roll out and throw away when it made enough money. We 
will not stop hacking on mx51 only because it might break your platform, that's 
not how it works.

To put it into more "commercial" terms, we are not paid to support your 
platform, on the other hand, we already gave you the source code. So to restore 
the balance, you help us keeping it working well by investing in QA. Everyone's 
happy.

Besides, if you want to deploy less potent version, you can always configure 
your u-boot in such way and deploy it to customer, noone can prevent you from 
that. But since there is support for certain additional hardware in upstream 
already, I'd object to remove it.

> If that's acceptable, sure...
> Marek says U-Boot doesn't follow this development model, but that
> would put Denx out of business.

Please stop putting words in my mouth, it is fairy insulting.

See how the mx28 stuff is being developed to see what I mean. Me, Fabio, Otavio 
and many others are adjusting each others boards and it works very well.

Best regards,
Marek Vasut