RE: [PATCH] net/ixgbe: Treat 1G Cu SFPs as 1G SX on the X550 devices

["Wang, Haiyue" <haiyue.wang@intel.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Morten Brørup <mb@smartsharesystems.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2022 17:12
> To: Thomas Monjalon <thomas@monjalon.net>; Daly, Jeff <jeffd@silicom-usa.com>; Stephen Hemminger
> <stephen@networkplumber.org>
> Cc: Wang, Haiyue <haiyue.wang@intel.com>; dev@dpdk.org; Zhang, Qi Z <qi.z.zhang@intel.com>; Mcnamara,
> John <john.mcnamara@intel.com>
> Subject: RE: [PATCH] net/ixgbe: Treat 1G Cu SFPs as 1G SX on the X550 devices
> 
> > From: Thomas Monjalon [mailto:thomas@monjalon.net]
> > Sent: Thursday, 14 April 2022 19.07
> >


> >
> > >    - should print message that when enabled the driver is no longer
> > supported.
> >
> > It could be supported by Silicom.
> 
> There's more to "supported by" than meets the eye: When an ODM designs products using Intel chips,
> some sort of customer support from Intel field application engineers is expected by the ODM. We cannot
> expect Silicom to provide design support to anyone but their own customers. E.g. if the NIC is
> behaving weird at the hardware bring-up phase, where it might be any type of problem, Silicom will not
> be able to provide the kind of support required. My point is: There is a difference between community
> support and customer support.
> 
> Let me throw up an idea for consideration... I'm trying to think out of the box here, so please
> forgive me if I'm stepping on anyone's toes with this suggestion:
> 
> If Intel doesn't want to take on the responsibility and support for this feature graciously donated by
> Silicom (which is obviously Intel's own decision to make), but the DPDK community thinks the feature
> is beneficial, perhaps Silicom could be accepted as the maintainer of this part of the driver? The
> driver would still come with a big fat disclaimer saying that this feature is not supported by Intel,

The first patch author Stephen D has left Silicom:
https://patchwork.dpdk.org/project/dpdk/patch/20211206221922.644187-8-stephend@silicom-usa.com/

How can you expect people can connect to Silicom always ? ; -)

> but maintained by Silicom, who also provides community support for it.
> 
> The worst case alternative is a fork or separate add-on patch set offered by the donor. This has
> certainly happened to other projects. Don't get me wrong, we are not there at all regarding this
> feature! I'm just wondering if we can make the DPDK project even more inclusive, so we can avoid forks
> and add-on patch sets now and in the future.
> 
> -Morten