STR9104 SoC

[Yohanes Nugroho <yohanes@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

As you all already know, there are so many ARM devices that run Linux,
but the patches for the device never makes it upstream, and very
quickly the patches become unmaintained and won't apply to the newer
kernels. This usually happens if the producer doesn't really care
about the code (they just want to comply with GPL, and release a messy
patch). I looked at the archives, and found at least one such case
http://lists.arm.linux.org.uk/lurker/message/20081013.120523.d73971be.en.html),
the answer for the question ("why don't the patch for this device goes
to mainline kernel?") was "The don't get merged without someone
advocating it, and someone cleaning up the code to make it happen. "

I got one of those ARM based NAS device that can run Linux, it uses
STR9104 SoC from StarSemi which have been acquired by Cavium Networks,
http://www.caviumnetworks.com/. Cavium no longer continues the
StarSemi product line. As far as I know, devices based on this SoC are
quite popular (low cost, $40-$80), and has been marketed under
different names (some of them are: Agestar NCB3AST, Coolmax CN-570,
NS-348S,  Emprex NSD-100,  Agestar NCB3AHT,  NAS2, and Revoltec rs049).

I have found the source code for the old kernel 2.4, and  I have
successfully create a patch for 2.6.25.4 about 8 months ago
(http://tinyhack.com/agestar). Recently I wanted something from the
latest kernel, and there has been many things moved around in such a
sort time (location of include files, etc). I thought to myself: if
this code is in the main kernel, it would have made my life easier.

In the case where the company doesn't seem to be interested anymore in
their product, should I step in and maintain the kernel for that
product? If I am willing to do that, would this kind of thing be
accepted to the mainline kernel? If so, I think I will clean up the
code and create a patch.

-- 
Regards
Yohanes Nugroho
http://tinyhack.com

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