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 42600BD0 for ; Thu, 20 Apr 2017 13:25:40 +0000 (UTC) Received: from bedivere.hansenpartnership.com (bedivere.hansenpartnership.com [66.63.167.143]) by smtp1.linuxfoundation.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 759D11D4 for ; Thu, 20 Apr 2017 13:25:38 +0000 (UTC) Message-ID: <1492694732.27758.12.camel@HansenPartnership.com> From: James Bottomley To: Daniel Vetter Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2017 06:25:32 -0700 In-Reply-To: References: <20188905.kHbMkj7sB6@avalon> <1834084.5qZ8rLimvk@avalon> <1492631703.3217.30.camel@HansenPartnership.com> 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 Thu, 2017-04-20 at 10:26 +0200, Daniel Vetter wrote: > On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 9:55 PM, James Bottomley > wrote: > > 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 don't think it's that easy. I guess due to the "interesting" stuff > we're doing in drm I get to hear some of the frustration stories from > leaf contributors. Picking a conference means you exclude folks who > won't go there (and Linux is so huge that there's simply no single > conference that would cover it all), Well, that's a reason for never doing anything at a conference, yes. However, the other way to look at it is that if the Maintainer summit rotates between US, EU and Asia and is allied to a tech conference in each, then we have a continent-local venue covering most of the world. So the argument isn't that this is a perfect solution, but that it's a good one because it gives people the opportunity to come and give feedback without having to have an invitation to the Maintainer summit. > but more important a common theme I'm hearing is that frustrated > folks don't want to speak up in public, because if they piss of their > maintainer, their problems just get worse. So perhaps they might turn up to give it privately. > On the other hand they lack the power and influence to fix > anything, so there's very little upside to speaking up about issues. > The usual solution seems to eventually just quietly abandon upstream, > or at least the particular subsystem. Empowerment is about giving people opportunities. I find most people take them. The fact that a few people may not avail themselves isn't a good reason for not trying. > The other thing is that because Linuxcon has such a wide audience you > might just get the peanut gallery kernel bashing from bystanders, not > feedback from actual (or at least potential) contributors. On that reasoning, we should abandon democracy immediately. James > Still worth trying I guess, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's > not much coming out of such a feedback session. > -Daniel