[Yaffs] Offers for help on yaffs

[Charles Manning]

Hi folks

There have recently been quite a few patches and offers for help on yaffs, and 
I have been trying to think out the best way to progress this.

From my perspective, there are a few issues that need to be kept in mind:
1) yaffs_guts is quite complex and is the result of many hours of thought, 
design, coding and testing. It is by no means perfect and there are a lot of 
things that can be fixed and a lot of improvements that can be made. AT this 
stage I am reluctant to open up yaffs_guts development too much. I welcome 
input and comments, but right now I don't want too many hands in this code.
2) Since yaffs_guts is part of the dual-licensed Aleph One product, code 
ownership gets a bit blurred when others start conttributing to yaffs_guts. 
For now we want to try keep it clean so we don't end up with ownership 
issues.

On the Linux-specific stuff (yaffs_fs and yaffs_mtdif etc), these points don't 
apply and I really appreciate it when others get involved. For these things I 
would like some help and don't like the thought that I bottleneck the 
improvement process (which I know I do).  This bottlenecking means that quite 
a few patches and suggestions doing make it into the real code.

To overcome this bottlenecking, I would like to suggest the following. First 
prize to me would be something like:

1) I keep my primary focus on the yaffs_guts stuff, as well as supporting 
yaffs Direct etc.

2) Someone take ownership of the Linux-specific stuff for 2.6 and the YAFFS2 
codebase, including handling incoming patches etc as well as interaction with 
the kernel community. This would be the prime focus of the Linux effort.

3) Any other  Linux uses like 2.4 compatability or maintenance of the YAFFS1 
codebase might need someone else to do the work.

I would like volunteers for someone to do job (2).  This need not be forever. 
A 6 month or so tour of duty would be fine, IMHO, as would two or three 
people sharing the task, but preferably we can end up with a situation where 
more people get actively involved in the support and improvement of YAFFS to 
everyone's advantage.

Thought/comments?

-- Charles