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 45009487 for ; Mon, 20 Jul 2015 17:59:43 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mx0a-00082601.pphosted.com (mx0b-00082601.pphosted.com [67.231.153.30]) by smtp1.linuxfoundation.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id A1E3B1C5 for ; Mon, 20 Jul 2015 17:59:42 +0000 (UTC) Date: Mon, 20 Jul 2015 13:58:51 -0400 From: Chris Mason To: Tim Bird Message-ID: <20150720175851.GG8274@ret.masoncoding.com> References: <20150716094125.16cdda73@lwn.net> <1437063875.18768.59.camel@HansenPartnership.com> <20150717101151.5d5bc86d@lwn.net> <20150717133712.42c82add@gandalf.local.home> <22243b88-029f-4560-9e13-0b7001ed14ec@email.android.com> <20150717135313.6b917e1a@gandalf.local.home> <20150717193013.GB8274@ret.masoncoding.com> <20150717154633.51804e6e@gandalf.local.home> <20150717200247.GD8274@ret.masoncoding.com> <55AD32A7.2070608@sonymobile.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <55AD32A7.2070608@sonymobile.com> Cc: 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 Mon, Jul 20, 2015 at 10:40:55AM -0700, Tim Bird wrote: > > > On 07/17/2015 01:02 PM, Chris Mason wrote: > > The first patch really doesn't seem to be a problem. At least from > > the stats I've seen so far. How do we get the 10..100th patches, > > hopefully without 90% of them being whitespace fixes? > > > > We're not going to be able to answer these without > > actual data. This means surveys and talking with > > new developers that we really hope to turn into > > long term members of the community. > > I may have a data set that is relevant here. > Last year I surveyed developers, targeting those who > 1) had made a change to the kernel that shipped in a commercial product, > (defined as "qualified" in the survey analysis) > and > 2) did not make contributions to mainline > > There were 93 out of 278 "qualified" developers who never submitted a > patch. That's about 33% of the developers who responded to the survey. > I suspect that the no-submission rate for developers who either did > not see the survey or did not respond to it is much, much higher. > This survey was focused on developers in the consumer electronics field. > > 25% of all survey respondents (not just the "qualified" ones) reported > they did not know how to contribute a patch. > > The survey was not detailed enough to determine what parts > of the submission process caused the most reluctance to contribute. > > I would guess (not very scientifically) that although we have thousands > of developers contributing to mainline, the pool of developers paid by their > companies to make products is in the range of 10s of thousands, and > our rate of conversion to contributors is under 10%. (I'm not sure > if that's good or bad.) I love hard data on this topic, and I really like the idea of trying to find the pool of actual kernel developers vs the pool of people visible on the mailing list. 10:1 makes me sad, but I'm not that surprised. Still, I'll channel Greg for a minute and google "how to send a patch to the linux kernel". I'd definitely believe people don't know how to get their employer to prioritize (allow?) sending the patches in, but I can't stretch to they don't know how to do it at all. -chris