May be a good in between is somehow hosting these as separate drivers that can be modprobed into modern kernels, and removing them from the normal linux kernel

May be a good in between is somehow hosting these as separate drivers that can be modprobed into modern kernels, and removing them from the normal linux kernel tree. Then, if someone somewhere wants to develop them, or if they are really "done" and "bug-free" then people who want them can still use them while not I guess making maintainers feel upset.