Driver strategy - we need to decide among incompatible goals

[Eric S. Raymond]

Mark Atwood, Project Manager <mark.atwood at ntpsec.org>:
> Can OnCore be supported by gpsd?

The OnCore already is mostly supported.  What's missing is that GPSD
can't do site-survey mode for the M12 timing variant. These are long
since EOL but still available on e-Bay for cheap, as boards with
TTL-level outputs; you have to do systems integration yourself,
including level shifters and 1PPS-to-DCD and a powered antenna.  This
page

https://www.dellanave.com/projects/carpc/oncore_gps.php

tells you what's required.

(Personal growth-experience note: when I took on this project in 
2015 that kind of hackery would have been outside my envelope.  
Now it's just inside, though I'd want a more-skilled friend looking
over my shoulder as I did the build.)

Also, all OnCores went EOL so long ago that they're going to 
have warapped around at least once.  Maybe twice!

The product-strategy question is whether we care about hardware that
old and with that much integration friction.  Which reduces to the
question of who we think our customers are.  I guarantee that nobody
running a modern data center is goiing to countenance the kind of
lashup you need to do to get an M12 board working; only the hobbyists
care enough about hardware this old.

> And while I also like removing code, we've removed a lot, and I'm not
> instantly adverse to giving the hobbyests a command option to handle
> wraparound on their old hardware.

/me winces

Time for another iteration of "Why I hate options".  Maybe this time as a blog post.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>