Andrew Lunn sent out a series of patches, to begin the removal of a number of ISA and PCMCIA network drivers from the Linux kernel. He elaborates on the recent maintenance burden caused by artificial intelligence/fuzzing:
"Until recently, these old drivers did not require much maintenance. Now, more beginners are using artificial intelligence, and testers are finding issues through fuzzing, which increases the burden on developers. It’s pointless to fix these old drivers if it’s unclear whether they have users at all."
These are ISA and PCMCIA Ethernet devices, primarily from the last century, with a couple of devices from 2001 or 2002. It’s unlikely they are still in use. However, remove them one patch at a time, so they can be restored if someone still has the hardware, modern kernels are in operation, and they want to take on the responsibilities of driver maintenance.
This series of patches removes old drivers for 3com, AMD, SMSC, Cirrus, Fujitsu, Xircom, and 8390 Ethernet, which in turn simplifies the kernel by 27,600 lines of code.
Source: linux.org.ru
