Comment Yeah, we'll see (Score 2) 56
We already tried upstream-first development, back in 2010. It was kind of a disaster. The downstream drivers are much more capable than the versions that had been upstreamed, due to the upstream kernel lacking support for the degree of integration between subsystems that Qualcomm's design required. The upstream drivers were functional but compromised in a few ways. When it next came time to do a kernel upgrade, the downstream drivers conflicted with their upstream counterparts. Unofficially, having been in charge of at least one kernel upgrade was sort of a prerequisite for becoming a sub-team lead, and this is partly why.
Maybe this time things will be different, between device tree, PSCI, and generally better maturity of ARM support. But, we'll see