Sony Memory Stick bus and block core
Core support for Sony's Memory Stick family of proprietary flash memory cards, including the bus layer that talks to host controllers and the block layer that exposes Memory Stick PRO cards as storage devices. The format was widely used in Sony cameras, camcorders, PlayStation Portable consoles, and Vaio laptops from the late 1990s until Sony pivoted to SD cards around 2010.
recommendation
Worth keeping but documenting as legacy hardware. The code is still receiving genuine upstream attention in 2025, including a stable backport that added a timeout to prevent hangs and ongoing treewide API cleanups, so it is not bit-rotting. However, Memory Stick is a discontinued Sony format with low real-world deployment today, mostly surviving in older cameras and camcorders, so a note flagging it as legacy would help future maintainers and packagers weigh its priority.
repository signals
sources
- lore.kernel.org
The memstick core still receives real upstream maintenance and stable backports; a 2025 fix added a timeout to prevent indefinite waiting in memstick.c.
- lore.kernel.org
The Memory Stick block layer is still being touched in 2025, albeit mostly by treewide API-cleanup work rather than feature development.
- sony.com
Sony still documents Memory Stick compatibility in 2025, but only as part of mixed 'Memory Stick and SD Card' compatibility guidance for cameras and camcorders.
- en.wikipedia.org
Memory Stick was a Sony proprietary flash-card family whose serious ecosystem development effectively ended as Sony shifted toward SD around 2010; newer support is largely legacy or adapter-based.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Local source inspection shows this directory is the Memory Stick bus/block stack, not just helpers. lore_file_timeline on memstick.c produced the stable backport URL and shows continued maintenance through late 2025; lore_file_timeline on mspro_block.c produced the 2025 cleanup patch URL and shows ongoing treewide churn, with no removal-series evidence found. Web search produced the Sony compatibility page and Wikipedia page; together they support a legacy-but-still-supported ecosystem with low present-day deployment, so keep the driver but annotate it as legacy rather than deprecate/remove.