Well, “maintainer” is usually a single person job. They didn’t write all the code or whatever, just were the gatekeeper to what got added and making sure shit works.
So I mean, it’s not great nobody is stepping up, but it’s also not like they magiced up the entirety of linux’s wifi support single handed, either.
The article isn’t entirely clear. I get the impression that the person in question may have been the sole maintainer for some hardware-agnostic parts of the wireless stack (which I’d expect to only need active development when a new standard gets greenlighted; should be bugfixes the rest of the time), co-maintainer of the drivers for some atheros chipsets, and the general oversight/coordination guy, but there are other developers working on specific drivers.
They were doing this all by themselves?!
Well, “maintainer” is usually a single person job. They didn’t write all the code or whatever, just were the gatekeeper to what got added and making sure shit works.
So I mean, it’s not great nobody is stepping up, but it’s also not like they magiced up the entirety of linux’s wifi support single handed, either.
Other people stepped up like within a day.
That’s great! Any idea who?
Where did you read that? I only saw Johannes Berg saying he couldn’t maintain that stack too, after three days.
Ah cool, the one time I read the article it’s wrong and saying that there hadn’t been someone who had stepped up yet.
Well, I’ll go back to making uninformed comments based solely on the headline, because clearly the articles are not adding any value. (/s, etc.)
There’s lots of developers contributing to the wifi drivers, there’s just no “lead maintainer” now
Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/2347/
Btw, you can embedd the image like that:
It will look like that:
Oddly xkcd’s image has no signature or other information identifying the creator.
Unless you get one of the day’s 10’000, it’ll be recognised by any tech people.
Post in addition to the link.
Just shut it all down, Nebraska guy. The world doesn’t appreciate you.
Seems like nowadays Nebraska guy is more likely to be a rabid Trump supporter who likes the way things have been so far in 2025. 🤮
The article isn’t entirely clear. I get the impression that the person in question may have been the sole maintainer for some hardware-agnostic parts of the wireless stack (which I’d expect to only need active development when a new standard gets greenlighted; should be bugfixes the rest of the time), co-maintainer of the drivers for some atheros chipsets, and the general oversight/coordination guy, but there are other developers working on specific drivers.
That explains many things