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 39730BA2 for ; Thu, 9 Jul 2015 18:15:13 +0000 (UTC) Received: from smtp.tuxdriver.com (charlotte.tuxdriver.com [70.61.120.58]) by smtp1.linuxfoundation.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 8F45F13F for ; Thu, 9 Jul 2015 18:15:12 +0000 (UTC) Date: Thu, 9 Jul 2015 14:08:46 -0400 From: "John W. Linville" To: Guenter Roeck Message-ID: <20150709180845.GG4265@tuxdriver.com> References: <201507080121.41463.PeterHuewe@gmx.de> <20150708140727.GH23515@io.lakedaemon.net> <20150708221836.GN23515@io.lakedaemon.net> <20150709150938.GF4265@tuxdriver.com> <20150709174535.GB32448@roeck-us.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20150709174535.GB32448@roeck-us.net> Cc: Jason Cooper , ksummit-discuss@lists.linuxfoundation.org Subject: Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [CORE TOPIC] Recruitment (Reviewers, Testers, Maintainers, Hobbyists) List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , On Thu, Jul 09, 2015 at 10:45:35AM -0700, Guenter Roeck wrote: > On Thu, Jul 09, 2015 at 11:09:38AM -0400, John W. Linville wrote: > > > > I guess I'm suggesting the opposite of a "professional maintainer". > > Some people thrive at being the center of a subsystem, as I did for > > some time with wireless. But burnout is a problem, and I think we > > can limit some of that if somehow we can encourage less expansive > > roles for individual maintainers. > > > > I hear you. > > However, having individual maintainers with a high level of responsibility > and sense of ownership is one of the reasons why the Linux kernel > development model works as well as it does. > > In a corporate environment, there is often no sense of ownership in a > specific piece of code. Quite often there _is_ no owner. As a result, > engineers don't feel the need to keep the code clean. They need to make > a change, they make it, they move on. The code gets more and more messy > and buggy over time, and no one really cares. > > Whatever we change, we need to make sure this doesn't happen with the > Linux kernel, or it will fall apart quickly. That is a good point, and I agree in principle. I would _not_ want to see any sort of "everyone can commit" model. Still, I think there might be ways to spread the maintainership load a bit wider. I guess the suggestion becomes a deeper maintainer hierarchy where maintainers only pull from sub-maintainers, and sub-maintainers handle individual patches and smaller pull requests from contributors. This is essentially the model used for wireless. That introduces the problem of increased patch merge latency, for which I have no good suggestions... John -- John W. Linville Someday the world will need a hero, and you linville@tuxdriver.com might be all we have. Be ready.