Re: [MAINTAINER SUMMIT] Adding more formality around feature inclusion and ejection

[Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab+huawei@kernel.org>]

Em Fri, 22 Aug 2025 16:31:49 +0100
James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@HansenPartnership.com> escreveu:

> Well I did ask for two concrete things, but I can certainly repeat:
> 
> On Fri, 2025-08-22 at 09:09 +0100, James Bottomley wrote:
> >  I think I'd be happy if we sort out two things
> > 
> >    1. That the decision be taken by more than one person rather than
> >       abdicating to last man standing
> >    2. The outcome be documented clearly.

There are some aspects here:

- Who will communicate the decision? 

The way I see, the best would be if this would be done by the subsystem 
maintainers who accepted/acked the feature addition.

- Who will be involved on such discussion?

I'd say the subsystem core maintainers and developers plus the top 
maintainer and eventually TAB. Feature removal may cause troubles 
to distro maintainers, as some may have it enabled as well. So,
better having more people know in advance.

- How this will be documented?

Depending on the reasons why a feature is dropped, e.g. if it
involves personal data, I don't think the entire process can be
transparent, but surely a sanitized summary should be documented.

IMHO, the best way to document it is at the patch dropping such
feature, which will explain why the feature is removed. IMO, the
best would be to have such patch containing SOB from multiple
people:

- core subsystem developers and maintainers;
- Ack or SOB by the top level maintainers, if pertinent.

Thanks,
Mauro