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 94D87B3F for ; Thu, 20 Apr 2017 14:47:38 +0000 (UTC) Received: from ms.lwn.net (ms.lwn.net [45.79.88.28]) by smtp1.linuxfoundation.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 77AE01AE for ; Thu, 20 Apr 2017 14:47:37 +0000 (UTC) Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2017 08:47:35 -0600 From: Jonathan Corbet To: James Bottomley Message-ID: <20170420084735.7ef1c3ef@lwn.net> In-Reply-To: <1492695238.27758.19.camel@HansenPartnership.com> References: <20170418181506.30de0470@vento.lan> <20170419163636.6747a232@lwn.net> <20170420052316.GA24503@infradead.org> <1492695238.27758.19.camel@HansenPartnership.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Cc: ksummit , Dave Airlie , Greg Kroah-Hartman , Ingo Molnar , Christoph Hellwig , 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, 20 Apr 2017 06:33:58 -0700 James Bottomley wrote: > I think it's worth discussing this. We accept a lot of patches because > we can and because the change looks innocuous enough, but which don't > actually have a tangible user visible benefit. Should we actually have > a net benefit threshold test we apply? With regard to the documentation patches, the intended tangible user-visible benefit is to turn a jumbled mess of a documentation directory into a set of coherent manuals that are aimed at and readily accessible to our different audiences (kernel developers, system administrators, application developers, etc. as appropriate). If we had always tossed the SCSI subsystem source into a single directory along with SCTP, user-mode Linux, perf, half of the TTY drivers, and all filesystems written before the second Bush administration, it would certainly make for easier muscle-memory access for those of us who think back nostalgically to installing from floppies. But for some strange reason we don't do that. When code needs refactoring, we do so - when, as you said, there is a tangible benefit. The same applies to directory organization. Though that may not apply to Documentation/ since we never really got around to an original factoring to refactor. Anyway, you can see why I raised the issue. I think that this process is improving the documentation, making it more accessible, and making more people interested in improving it. But I have my hands plenty full of other things and, if this work is really swimming against the current, it would be good to know. jon