Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [CORE TOPIC] [nomination] Move Fast and Oops Things

[Andy Grover <agrover@redhat.com>]

On 05/16/2014 08:04 AM, Chris Mason wrote:
> The biggest difference: there are no maintainers.  If I want to go
> change the calendar tool to fix a bug, I patch it, get someone else to
> sign off and push.
>
> All of which is my way of saying the maintainers (me included) are the
> biggest bottleneck.  There are a lot of reasons I think the maintainer
> model fits the kernel better, but at least for btrfs I'm trying to
> speed up the patch review process and use patchwork more effectively.

Dan and Chris, you talked about some technical differences and 
solutions, but here are some thoughts/questions I had just on the 
non-technical side of things for the ksummit:

* Big differences vs corporate development:
- no one can be told what to do by a common boss
- No assumption that co-contributors have a basic level of competence, 
so sign-offs may not mean much
- Co-contributors' area of development may have no- or negative value 
for maintainer (see "tinification" as an e.g.)
- Co-contributors may work for competing companies

* Forking the project, the traditional FOSS avenue for 
bad-maintainer/moving-too-slow is not realistically available for the 
kernel or per-subsystem, due to massive momentum.

* If the maintainer is unresponsive, what recourse does a submitter 
have? (Is this written down somewhere?) Is taking recourse actually 
culturally acceptable? How would the gone-around maintainer treat future 
submissions?

* At what point does it make sense to field a sub- or co-maintainer?

* Would more maintainer delegation help contributor recruitment and 
continued involvement? Versus, efficiency of highly-optimized patchflows 
by fewer maintainers.

* Do current maintainers feel they cannot delegate or relinquish 
maintainership? Maintainership-as-a-burden vs. 
maintainership-as-lead-developer vs. maintainership-as-a-career-goal.

* Are there other large-scale FOSS projects that may have development 
flows worth drawing lessons from?

Thanks -- Andy