On Mon, 2012-11-12 at 06:06 +0200, Stefan Kristiansson wrote: > On Sun, Nov 11, 2012 at 10:16:25PM +0100, Franck Jullien wrote: > > As I told you when we met, the tiny SPI core is a good example. > > This core as a driver in the Linux mainline (spi-oc-tiny.c). However, > > on the opencores website, it doesn't have a OCCP stamp. This > > should not be possible....Plus, the official maintainer should be > > opencores because the core has to remain very stable. Any change > > in the core should be acked by opencores gurus and checked against > > the linux driver. > > > > Although I agree with most of the other things you brought up, > this example is good. > Who are those opencores gurus that should maintain it? > I for ones have never used that core and probably never will, > so I don't really care much about it. > It happens to have a driver in Linux mainline since the > creator of the core submitted a driver that he had written.
As I recall it, the Linux driver was submitted by one of the NIOS folks and wasn't the author/maintainer of core himself. In my opinion, OC would better serve as a ward of _quality_ specifications than as another sourceforge/github. As long as there's a single, complete, and correct spec hosted by a reputable central organization, then it subsequently matters little how many implementations of the core/driver there are, where they are, or who maintains them. The spec's, today, I find a bit too "unfinished"... and perhaps a bit too fluid; if there's anything a "guru" should be watching for it's incompatible changes to the specification. I worry a bit that the 'compatible' tag on the Linux drivers is so tightly coupled to implementation today, whereas as it really should just be coupled to the OC specification revision and, thus, be _mostly_ implementation independent. So my suggestion would be: i) make spec management central and do quality control of this ii) when searching for a project, it leads you to the spec and, secondarily, points you to a list of available implementations (and available drivers, if applicable) iii) "certified" stamps on the site go on the implementations, not the project as a whole... > If that guy isn't actively maintaining that project anymore, > and you want to step up and give it some love, that's great. > If he's not interested in being the maintainer anymore, > then he'll probably gracefully handover the maintainership > to you, just like it would happen in any other open source project. Just fork the project and do a better job maintaining it than the original guy and it's yours... if you cannot reach the original maintainer anyway, then this isn't even considered unethical. But, as always, be careful what you wish for...! /Jonas _______________________________________________ OpenRISC mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openrisc.net/listinfo/openrisc
