[ewg] [ANNOUNCE] OFED 4.8-rc2 release is available

[Jim Foraker]

On 05/04/2017 10:34 AM, Hefty, Sean wrote:
>> This is exactly why we so strongly discourage this out of tree
>> stuff - getting something unmergable in OFED is *NOT* Job Done,
>> Time to Go Home. Down this path just creates another Lustre mess.
>
> Actually, this may be 'job done'.  No individual or company is
> obligated to provide upstream software for any of their hardware.
> OFA decides what to ship in their software products, not the greater
> linux kernel community.  Individual companies can decide if out of
> tree maintenance is more cost effective than trying to merge code
> upstream.  Because that's what this ultimately comes down to.
>
> IMO, the only people who have legitimate complaints here are those
> people running Xeon Phi with Mellanox HCAs who are being forced to
> use OFED, rather than upstream code.

      Apparently we've experimented with doing just this, so I'll bite. 
And I will say the same thing we've told every vendor repeatedly: "get 
your code upstream!"
      A vendor may weigh the cost of maintaining out-of-tree code versus 
upstreaming it, but as a customer, I'm more concerned about the 
annoyance and time wasted having to run N different software stacks on N 
different hardware types versus being able to use the RDMA stack from my 
preferred linux distribution everywhere.  And the best way to get your 
code into the distributions is to get it upstream.
      I have no particular opinion on whether or not the xeon-phi driver 
belongs in OFED.  But cloaking this conversation in talk of obligations 
and framers' intent misses a bigger point, which is that any code not 
fully upstreamed, and hence likely to be found in your user's distro, 
inconveniences them, increases their support costs, and makes it less 
likely that they will adopt your product.

      Jim