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 0B49623CF for ; Wed, 20 Sep 2023 22:54:36 +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 0A17E1257; Thu, 21 Sep 2023 00:52:51 +0200 (CEST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/simple; d=ideasonboard.com; s=mail; t=1695250372; bh=O/JNmMAvJeCqfqisQuU3QtfCBLPLvD5/r0/ilHrYjdk=; h=Date:From:To:Cc:Subject:References:In-Reply-To:From; b=Qgc+kS2rNXvwEPH1aUezvO9wxijF0pjKShHlrJNv37vliz5GnA+0/YGTNJgoQ5DDj i3Lq9zop7Z1t3IvEQVu9gB9vGBI1tfNagMycMRilZ9Ah32MyRIZnHnfLLv1vA17DTq pMepuCVeEoIYdHoCWQLfQYLTmSgcRh+mICOEDhoM= Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2023 01:54:41 +0300 From: Laurent Pinchart To: Shuah Cc: Steven Rostedt , Bart Van Assche , James Bottomley , ksummit@lists.linux.dev, tech-board-discuss@lists.linux-foundation.org Subject: Re: [MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] Maintainers Support Group Message-ID: <20230920225441.GA12561@pendragon.ideasonboard.com> References: <20230919121001.7bc610d4@gandalf.local.home> <20230919132112.19b700df@gandalf.local.home> <496f0b46-1a40-af25-ac1a-d4e7f1a8aad0@kernel.org> <20230919192148.1010cc74@gandalf.local.home> <57b53325-3c40-641e-30de-5755650960f8@kernel.org> 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: <57b53325-3c40-641e-30de-5755650960f8@kernel.org> On Wed, Sep 20, 2023 at 01:52:19PM -0600, Shuah wrote: > On 9/19/23 17:21, Steven Rostedt wrote: > > On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 16:55:29 -0600 Shuah wrote: > > > >> As I replied to Ted and Randy, I think the proposal James pointed to is > >> where we could start and evolve that discussion to the actions such as > >> support group, instead of starting with a solution without looking at > >> the bigger picture. > >> > >> https://lore.kernel.org/ksummit/ab9cfd857e32635f626a906410ad95877a22f0db.camel@HansenPartnership.com/ > > > > I saw this when James first posted it. I may have been the lone figure to > > do so as I had to point it out when the topic came up a second time ;-) > > > > https://lore.kernel.org/all/20230817104622.511c61b4@gandalf.local.home/ > > > > I'm all for having this discussion under James topic, but this idea of a > > Support Group is something I've been discussing with other maintainers for > > some time. I believe I even mentioned it to you while on the bus in Dublin. > > Thank you. Yes. We talked about this last year at Dublin. Work of being an > Open source developer and especially a maintainer demands emotional labor. > This is definitely a risk factor for burnout. > > I happened to com across an article today about burnout risk factors and some > of those are faced by maintainers and developers. If you are interested, I can > send the link. Collecting interesting (and hopefully useful) resources is a fairly low effort exercise, so I'll start: "Negotiating the Nonnegotiable", by Daniel Shapiro https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/314284/negotiating-the-nonnegotiable-by-daniel-shapiro/ The hard part will be finding time to read all the useful resources. > > One of the things the TAB is working on is to come up with a "Communication > > Style" document that will be focused on how submitters should speak to > > maintainers and how maintainers should speak to submitters. The idea is to > > help people understand the POV that others are coming from. But that's a > > discussion for another day. > > Formalizing the communication is a good idea - I keep translating maintainer > and developer speak to new developers I mentor often enough to see the value > of such an effort. :) > > > Anyway, with the majority of the [MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] submissions related > > to this, I think it should definitely be discussed at the maintainers > > summit. > > I would recommend discussion this prior to the Maintainer summit in an open > session to get input from developers and maintainers who aren't invited to > the maintainers summit myself included. I wonder if I'm stating the obvious, but trying to figure out ways to handle psychological problems in a group made of software developers seems like we will be fairly short on essential skills for this kind of exercise. Given the size of the affected community, I think we could find ways to get professional help. -- Regards, Laurent Pinchart