[diagnostic TDR mode patches] unify our solution opinions/suggestions in one thread

[Daniel Stone]

Hi Monk,

On Thu, 2 Sept 2021 at 06:52, Liu, Monk <Monk.Liu at amd.com> wrote:
> I didn't mean your changes on AMD driver need my personal approval or review ... and  I'm totally already get used that our driver is not 100% under control by AMDers,
> but supposedly any one from community (including you) who tend to change AMD's driver need at least to get approvement from someone in AMD, e.g.: AlexD or Christian, doesn't that reasonable?
> just like we need your approve if we try to modify DRM-sched, or need panfrost's approval if we need to change panfrost code ...
>
> by only CC AMD's engineers looks not quite properly, how do you know if your changes (on AMD code part) are conflicting with AMD's on-going internal features/refactoring or not ?

Looking at the patches in question, they were (at least mostly) CCed
both to the amd-gfx@ mailing list and also to ckoenig. Unfortunately
it is not possible for every single patch to get mandatory signoff
from every single stakeholder - e.g. if every AMD patch which touched
the scheduler required explicit approval from Etnaviv, Freedreno,
Lima, Panfrost, and V3D teams, it would become very difficult for AMD
to merge any code.

So the approach is that patches are sent for approval, they are CCed
to people who should be interested, and after some time with no
comments, they may be merged if it seems like a reasonable thing to
do.

The problem with internal work is that, well, it's internal. If the
community sends patches to amd-gfx@, there is no comment from AMD, and
then months later we are told that it should not have happened because
it conflicts with development that AMD has been doing - how should the
rest of the community have known about this? So unfortunately this is
the compromise: if you decide to do private development, not inform
anyone about your plans, and not join in any common discussion, then
it is your responsibility to deal with any changes or conflicts that
happen whilst you are developing privately.

The only way we can successfully have support in the same ecosystem
for AMD, Arm, Broadcom, Intel, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, and VeriSilicon, is
that we are all working together openly. If community development had
to stop because each of these vendors had been doing internal
development for several months without even informing the community of
their plans, any kind of shared development is clearly impossible.

Cheers,
Daniel