Drop the "ipddp" module?

[Adam Seering]

Hi all,
	I'm wondering whether the Ubuntu team might consider dropping the 
"ipddp" module (kernel-based IP encapsulation for pre-Ethernet Macs) 
from the official Ubuntu kernel build?  If so, how would I go about 
proposing such a change?

	It has bit-rotted and appears to no longer serve its intended function. 
  CentOS (among others) stopped compiling this module many years ago. 
Its upstream maintainers have not been responsive on netdev for years 
and don't seem to be taking patches.  More importantly, it breaks a 
kernel interface that its newer pure-userspace counterpart "MacIPGW" 
depends on even if compiled as a module *and not loaded*.


	As justification for these claims:


	"ipddp" has a bug[1][2] such that, even when built as a module, part of 
it gets compiled directly into the kernel and causes IP-over-DDP packets 
to get silently dropped.  The only workaround is to not compile the 
module at all.

	The "ipddp" module is not useful on its own.  It must be configured by 
userspace programs[3] which Ubuntu doesn't package -- I can't even find 
one of them anywhere online, in any form.

	The third-party app "MacIPGW"[4] largely supercedes the kernel module. 
However, the aforementioned bug in this module breaks MacIPGW unless the 
module is not compiled at all as part of the kernel build.	

	I tried to upstream the simple kernel patch[5] that simply fixes the 
module, but my patch never got reviewed.  (Well, David Miller snarked at 
me; I think (?) he missed that this is a trivial bug, not some weird 
design change, and a silly hobbyist like me doesn't get enough cycles of 
his time to clarify such things.)



	It could well be that I'm the only person in the world who cares about 
this.  I'm not entirely averse to maintaining my own kernel build.  But 
this is such an obvious bug, and I really do like letting the Ubuntu 
security team keep my kernel up-to-date for me...  If y'all don't want 
to accept this change, got any alternative suggestions?

Thanks,
Adam


[1] https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=115031
[2] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-lts-wily/+bug/1559772
[3] https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/networking/ipddp.txt
[4] https://github.com/zero2sixd/macipgw
[5] http://marc.info/?l=linux-netdev&m=145850882718530&w=2