Several Linux DRM Drivers Orphaned Due To Developer Health

Several of the upstream Linux Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) drivers have become orphaned due to the unfortunately declining health of their lone driver maintainer.

Noralf Trønnes announced on Thursday that sadly he will no longer be able to maintain the kernel driver code he's been managing for years. Noralf noted in a mailing list post his declining health no longer puts him in a position to be able to maintain the drivers he developed and has continued to maintain:

"Remove myself as maintainer for gud, mi0283qt, panel-mipi-dbi and repaper. My fatigue illness has finally closed the door on doing development of even moderate complexity so it's sad to let this go."

This now means that the DRM drivers for the Generic USB Display "GUD", MI0283QT TinyDRM driver, the DRM driver for MIPI DBI compatible panels, and Pervasive Repaper Panels are now all orphaned. Hopefully someone(s) will be able to step up to take over maintaining this code worked on by Trønnes.

Noralf previously stepped down as maintainer of the FBTFT frame-buffer drivers as well due to the worsening state of his fatigue illness.

Noralf's work on the Generic USB Display Driver was particularly interesting for opening up some nifty and innovative possibilities for creating a USB display/adapter using this driver like turning a Raspberry Pi Zero into a USB to HDMI display adapter, among other possible uses. The Generic USB Display Driver was upstreamed back in Linux 5.13.

All the best wishes to Noralf as he battles his illness and many thanks from the open-source community for all of his DRM contributions over the years.