[Taniwha]

well as a many time Broadcom customer I've certainly seen the best and the worst of it - I've had large (1000 file) software releases for Broadcom chips that mutated their directory structure release to release, bug fixes would arrive and revert themselves, then after complaints return - integrating a new software drop into our VCS was always fraught and took weeks longer than we expected - people would fight not to be stuck with doing the next Broadcom integration and eventually we'd say "enough! we'll live with it" and refuse to take any new stuff - at one point we got the FE to admit that there was no one master tree inside Broadcom, just personal trees that were passed around - on the other hand other code from them was well maintained and obviously under good source code control.

I think the way to understand Broadcom is to realise that they are really a whole bunch of smaller startup companies, more are continually being bought and brought into the fold, this messes with their internal company culture, chips may have functional units in them that came from 5 different companies, each with their own coding standards, VCSs, documentation standards etc etc - as a result it's pretty hit and miss and may take a generation or two for a new technology to settle down - I kind of get the impression that there's ongoing friction between the remnants of these companies as they find their way in the new organisation