From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from perceval.ideasonboard.com (perceval.ideasonboard.com [213.167.242.64]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by smtp.subspace.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 646628460 for ; Mon, 21 Aug 2023 16:04:03 +0000 (UTC) Received: from pendragon.ideasonboard.com (213-243-189-158.bb.dnainternet.fi [213.243.189.158]) by perceval.ideasonboard.com (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 06A183F1; Mon, 21 Aug 2023 18:02:44 +0200 (CEST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/simple; d=ideasonboard.com; s=mail; t=1692633765; bh=FchihxCKYdKngHG7f+tybiBZlWbgj7Zz3HIh3QtUed8=; h=Date:From:To:Cc:Subject:References:In-Reply-To:From; b=bJkDQlswq1iTBcbTZlHZTBhXPJjQt7BOKNE4QH1BF7wlwBue+2myQYHD+DB/uDN29 p85u/vfx0mSbulbACOmfqcqG37Y58XeMjuX4KQqCIp5jB8d9Eks0zDg061p9pYydNG q27lG7jJpVTc+qEZt4V4MmGqivW1nN5Kxhp7TMOI= Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2023 19:04:08 +0300 From: Laurent Pinchart To: Mark Brown Cc: Linus Walleij , Alexei Starovoitov , Jakub Kicinski , Andrew Lunn , Luis Chamberlain , Josef Bacik , ksummit@lists.linux.dev, Jeff Layton , Song Liu Subject: Re: [MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] Maintainer burnout Message-ID: <20230821160408.GK10135@pendragon.ideasonboard.com> References: <20230816180808.GB2919664@perftesting> <20230817093914.GE21668@pendragon.ideasonboard.com> <44814ed5-7bab-4e56-9ca6-189870f97f41@lunn.ch> <20230817081957.1287b966@kernel.org> <20230818152629.GA13558@pendragon.ideasonboard.com> Precedence: bulk X-Mailing-List: ksummit@lists.linux.dev List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: On Fri, Aug 18, 2023 at 05:10:07PM +0100, Mark Brown wrote: > On Fri, Aug 18, 2023 at 06:26:29PM +0300, Laurent Pinchart wrote: > > On Fri, Aug 18, 2023 at 03:55:11PM +0200, Linus Walleij wrote: > > > > The DRI/DRM community has group maintainership that works a little > > > bit. > > > Essentially it boils down to ask people to review your stuff and you > > > will review and also merge their stuff in return. > > > Sometimes this works. > > > Especially if you are a circle of acquaintances working full > > > time on similar things, yay! So much support. > > > When you are a sporadic contributor it doesn't work as well. > > > Because you cannot always find some matching contribution to > > > review and you feel like begging. > > > So different solutions for different contributors may be needed. > > > I've also experienced mixed results from "trading reviews". It's > > certainly nice on paper, and it works sometimes, especially when asking > > contributors to review patches that are directly related to their > > business interest. I remember asking a contributor from a large company > > to help me with reviews, to free some of my time to review their > > patches. The contributor helped with reviewing third-party contributions > > to the driver they're actively working on. When I asked for help > > reviewing an entirely separate driver that their employer had no > > business interest in, however, I faced the "we're busy and don't have > > time" argument. > > > > Maybe part of the solution here, to share the maintenance burden, is to > > expect contributors, especially the ones with large financial resources, > > to spent a certain percentage of their time reviewing code that is in > > their area of expertise but not in their area of business interest. > > That issue with people having the background knowledge needed to > adequately review things they don't have specific experience with can be > a problem here. It's not typically *harmful* other than issues with > people doing disproportionately pedantic reviews (which can be a > problem) but you do still need to keep an eye on things it can feel a > bit make work so there's a balance with making it an explicit > requirement. Most of my reviews point of issues with usage of in-kernel and userspace APIs, rather than problems specific to the hardware at hand. Developers who contribute drivers with similar usage patterns of APIs should be able to help there. -- Regards, Laurent Pinchart