FCP-0101: Deprecating most 10/100 Ethernet drivers

[Peter Jeremy]

On 2018-Oct-04 08:44:11 +0000, Alexey Dokuchaev <danfe at FreeBSD.org> wrote:
>Looking at the commits they require near zero maintenance.  What exactly
>is the burden here?

As various others have stated, this isn't true.  All the code in FreeBSD has
an ongoing maintenance cost and is an impediment to adding new features.
There is no point in spending valuable developer effort to update drivers
and test them with unusual/obsolete hardware unless those drivers are going
to actually be used.

>Another question: why the fuck FreeBSD likes to kill
>non-broken, low-volatile and perfectly working stuff?

That language is uncalled for.

>We offer probably
>the best NIC driver support on the block, yet you're proposing to shrink
>one of the few areas where we shine.  WTF?!

Supporting NICs that no-one uses doesn't benefit anyone.  No-one is talking
about removing NICs that are in active use.

>ae(4) was used in Asus EeePC 701/900 which are still popular among hackers.

Those netbooks are more than a decade old now and I don't expect many are
still functional.  Will people still expect to use them with FreeBSD 13 in 5
years time?

>As it can be seen this list tends to cover nearly all 100 cards, yet no
>one (pardon me if I missed those) asks for 10.  So how about making this
>proposal cover only 10 cards,

What is the purpose in keeping unused FastEthernet cards in the tree?

>if you can't resist the itch to remove
>something from the tree?

Again, that language is uncalled for.

-- 
Peter Jeremy
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