netdev - Status of orphaned ltq_etop ethernet driver: mainline vs. OpenWRT

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Message-ID: <43dff7cf-cb00-4480-8856-501a8313951e@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2026 21:23:05 +0100
From: Heiner Kallweit <hkallweit1@...il.com>
To: John Crispin <blogic@...nwrt.org>, Ralph Hempel
 <ralph.hempel@...tiq.com>, John Crispin <john@...ozen.org>,
 Hauke Mehrtens <hauke@...ke-m.de>, Daniel Golle <daniel@...rotopia.org>,
 Jakub Kicinski <kuba@...nel.org>, Paolo Abeni <pabeni@...hat.com>,
 Eric Dumazet <edumazet@...gle.com>, David Miller <davem@...emloft.net>,
 Andrew Lunn <andrew+netdev@...n.ch>
Cc: "netdev@...r.kernel.org" <netdev@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Status of orphaned ltq_etop ethernet driver: mainline vs. OpenWRT

This driver in mainline lost its in-tree user with commit
cd93b4895ea5 ("MIPS: lantiq: drop mips_machine support")
in 2012. Since then it has had no in-tree user.

Only (?) user seems to be OpenWRT, with several changes to
the in-tree driver version:
target/linux/lantiq/patches-6.12/035-owrt-lantiq-wifi-and-ethernet-eeprom-handling.patch
target/linux/lantiq/patches-6.12/028-NET-lantiq-various-etop-fixes.patch
target/linux/lantiq/patches-6.12/701-NET-lantiq-etop-of-mido.patch
So it seems the driver is maintained in OpenWrt only
(except tree-wide in-tree changes).

To me this leaves two questions:
- Move this driver to OpenWRT completely?
- Or mainline all downstream changes, maintain driver in
  mainline, and mainline also the users of this driver?