Re: Is the eCos Open Source development model at risk?

[Nick Garnett <nickg at ecoscentric dot com>]

Thomas BINDER <Thomas.Binder@frequentis.com> writes:

> Jonathan Larmour wrote:
> > <snip>
> > >
> > > However, the lack of response from the maintainers (the original mail
> > > was sent ~ 2 months ago) is an indication that either, (a) nobody seems
> > > to be interested, or (b) the maintainers are simply too busy to
> > > respond.
> > >
> > > If (a),
> > 
> > It isn't (a). We're always interested. That's not to say we'll accept your
> > patch ;), but you know what I mean. Memory protection is an important
> > feature although a generic design can be tricky.
> 
> I agree, it is not easy. 

> As we actually need the memory protection on two platforms (PowerPC,
> i586) we tried to be as generic as possible. Many internal
> discussions were necessary to get to the design that was finally
> implemented for the Power architecture.
> 
> As for the patch, we still don't know if one of the maintainers is
> willing to at least throw a glance at it. As I wrote earlier, we
> really benefit when the changes get (at least) partly integrated
> into the main ecos branch. In the long term we are not interested in
> maintaining our private eCos branch.
> 

I would certainly be willing to take a look. However I do have very
deep reservations about including the sort of memory protection you
appear to be suggesting. eCos was explicitly not designed to permit
later addition of this sort of thing, and I would not want to
compromise the current code or design to add it.

If you want to just send me a diff against the current anoncvs then I
will be happy to look it over. Don't bother about changelogs at
present, unless they contain information that would be useful in
understanding what you have done.


-- 
Nick Garnett                    eCos Kernel Architect
http://www.ecoscentric.com/     The eCos and RedBoot experts