this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2025
683 points (99.3% liked)

Technology

68187 readers
3649 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 208 points 1 month ago (5 children)

They were doing this all by themselves?!

[–] [email protected] 206 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 52 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Other people stepped up like within a day.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

That's great! Any idea who?

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 116 points 1 month ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 74 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Btw, you can embedd the image like that:

![Someday ImageMagick will finally break for good and we'll have a long period of scrambling as we try to reassemble civilization from the rubble.](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/dependency.png)

It will look like that:

Someday ImageMagick will finally break for good and we'll have a long period of scrambling as we try to reassemble civilization from the rubble.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Oddly xkcd's image has no signature or other information identifying the creator.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago

Unless you get one of the day's 10'000, it'll be recognised by any tech people.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 63 points 1 month ago

There's lots of developers contributing to the wifi drivers, there's just no "lead maintainer" now

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 month ago

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.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 108 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Ethernet cable intensifies

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I hope they invent wireless ethernet

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 month ago

Maybe we can put it on the open 2.4GHz spectrum and encrypt it with RC4.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Ethernet is a layer 2 protocol. It can run on many different mediums and cable types.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago (1 children)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 76 points 1 month ago

Perhaps not relevant to the conversation, but if you use and enjoy any FOSS product, donate money to the maintainers when you can

[–] [email protected] 63 points 1 month ago (2 children)

What is up with all the maintainers stepping down lately?

[–] [email protected] 147 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Original creators and maintainers are hitting retirement age.

And not many good younger people are available to take the mantle.

This is the long-term cost of how persnickety FOSS maintainers are when it comes to accepting outside contributions to their work.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago

A number of them have written about their reasons- I can't speak for the maintainer this article is about but the general sentiment I've seen from the ones I've been hearing about is that the culture around kernel development is dogwater. Lots of it surrounding refusal to make any space for R4L and shitting on devs working on it, but then also spinning out of that are maintainers likening their quality control responsibilities to being "the thin blue line".

[–] [email protected] 59 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I'd like it if Valve steps up to do the job. They're making hardware that needs WiFi, might as well go all in.

[–] [email protected] 65 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Although I get the thought I would rather everything not centralise to valve and Gabe Newell

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago (2 children)

The likely alternatives are Google, Apple, Microsoft, or Amazon. 😕

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Does it have to be a Business can it not be Steve who lives in Nebraska?

[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 month ago

Steve burned out a long time ago after all the free work he did on top of his day job.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago

It's better if the titular Steve isn't from US. Right now at least.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

And Intel, Qualcomm, or AMD. Or probably several others as well.

[–] [email protected] 57 points 1 month ago (4 children)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago

WiMax gang rise up

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

I need to get some Meshtastic modules...

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago
[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Is it the new cool thing for Linux maintainers to step down?

Third time I’ve seen it recently…

[–] [email protected] 58 points 1 month ago (3 children)

It's demographics. Linux contributors & maintainers skew heavily to the older end of the spectrum (and, although not relevant to this point, also skew heavily male).

People who can contribute time to a project for free tend to be older because they are financially and career settled by the time they hit 50s. Raising a family tends not to leave a lot of spare time.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Bingo.

Contributing and/or maintaining a FOSS project < not getting murdered by my wife for "playing on my computer instead of spending time with my family."

It could be some of the most mission-critical work imaginable, but she'd still see it as goofing around because I'm not getting paid, and she requires attention. And I love the hell out of my wife, so happy wife indeed equals happy life.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago

I mean, probably someone at qualcomm will likely take his place? They need drivers for themselves anyway and will probably continue providing them. I have no idea who the contributors of similar drivers are but I'd imagine Intel makes drivers for their wifi chips themselves and contributes them to the kernel since they count as one of the biggest contributors.

load more comments
view more: next ›