From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from smtp1.linuxfoundation.org (smtp1.linux-foundation.org [172.17.192.35]) by mail.linuxfoundation.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id C9CADC0D for ; Wed, 19 Apr 2017 19:55:06 +0000 (UTC) Received: from bedivere.hansenpartnership.com (bedivere.hansenpartnership.com [66.63.167.143]) by smtp1.linuxfoundation.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id D4BCC144 for ; Wed, 19 Apr 2017 19:55:05 +0000 (UTC) Message-ID: <1492631703.3217.30.camel@HansenPartnership.com> From: James Bottomley To: Laurent Pinchart , Linus Torvalds Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2017 12:55:03 -0700 In-Reply-To: <1834084.5qZ8rLimvk@avalon> References: <20188905.kHbMkj7sB6@avalon> <1834084.5qZ8rLimvk@avalon> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: ksummit , Dave Airlie , Greg Kroah-Hartman , Ingo Molnar , Doug Ledford , David Miller Subject: Re: [Ksummit-discuss] "Maintainer summit" invitation discussion List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , On Wed, 2017-04-19 at 22:50 +0300, Laurent Pinchart wrote: > Hi Linus, > > On Wednesday 19 Apr 2017 12:40:47 Linus Torvalds wrote: > > On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 12:25 PM, Laurent Pinchart wrote: > > > Agreed, for a maintainer summit to be useful, we need to have > > > multiple sides present. Gathering core maintainers with key > > > representatives of the downstream communities around the table is > > > great, but I think we would be missing one category whose opinion > > > is equally important: kernel developers. > > > > > > When everything goes well developers can be represented by their > > > maintainers. That's the case where the process flows smoothly, so > > > there isn't likely to be much to discuss. However, problems > > > occurring in the maintenance process are likely to result in, if > > > not conflicts, at least different views between maintainers and > > > developers, in which case developers won't be represented at the > > > summit. > > > > > > I'm not sure how to handle that. I certainly don't want to > > > increase the number of attendees to include key representatives > > > of developers (and while I'd be very curious to see how they > > > would be selected, I doubt it would work in practice), but I also > > > believe we need to address this class of maintainership issues. > > > > I do agree that it would be a great thing to have a "bitch at > > maintainers" session where developers get to vent frustration at > > how their patches are (or are _not_) accepted by maintainers. > > > > I know we've had issues in the VFS layer, with Al sometimes > > effectively dropping off the intenet for a time, for example. And > > I'm sure it happens elsewhere too, I'm just aware of the VFS side > > because it's one of the areas where I end up personally being a > > secondary maintainer. > > > > But the problem with that "bitch at maintainers" thing is that I > > can't for the life of me come up with a sane small set of people to > > do that. So I don't see it happening ;( > > I currently don't have any good idea to make that happen either, but > I'll keep thinking about it :-) More than bitching at maintainers, I > believe that lots of developers, especially "smaller" or infrequent > kernel contributors, are frustrated by maintainership issues that the > related maintainers might not even be aware of. Isn't it easy? The Maintainers summit is going to be part of a larger kernel track within LinuxCon EU (not that everyone plans on staying on, of course, but several will be). Just put the bitch at Maintainers session in that as a round table, so any attendee of LinuxCon EU can come and complain if they want to. I think also it might be a good idea to separate internal process issues, which would be done in the small group from external ones, which should, perhaps, have the Kernel track at LinuxCon visibility. James