Hello,
I have just begun the process of attempting to port the WL18xx driver from Linux to NetBSD. This is an sdio wifi/bluetooth card that is used on beaglebone black (as well as other systems, but it seems beaglebone is the context I see it most frequently mentioned in). I have also reached out to the tech-kern mailing list to notify about my attempt.
I have a few questions:
Is it common for non-developers (i.e. those who don't have a commit bit) to contribute a new driver? What does the process for this usually look like? My current plan is just to work on this locally and communicate my changes, then notify the mailing list and open a PR (problem report, not pull request) with a patch when/if the driver is complete.
I know there is an on going wifi renewal project by Martin (I did a small amount of work in it a few years ago). It seems like progress is still being made, but it seems uncertain when this will be merged to trunk. If I want to have this up-streamed, is it sensible to just add the driver for the existing wifi stack, and then update it again when the new wifi stack is merged? It seems like it would make development/testing quite tricky to try and port a driver from Linux into a branch which is also replacing the entire 802.11 stack. It could make distinguishing bugs between the driver vs 802.11 very difficult.
In order to support this device it requires proprietary firmware blobs from TI. These blobs are available in the debian package "firmware-ti-connectivity". I am wondering if the license permits us to legally include these blobs in the NetBSD src tree (it sounds like it does, but I just want to confirm with someone who is more knowledable on how this works). Please see my last email for a copy of the license statement: https://mail-index.netbsd.org/tech-kern/2025/01/06/msg029934.html
Thanks!
James
