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 ESMTP id 7E4D1990 for ; Sat, 31 May 2014 22:36:08 +0000 (UTC) Received: from v094114.home.net.pl (v094114.home.net.pl [79.96.170.134]) by smtp1.linuxfoundation.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 6B61A20264 for ; Sat, 31 May 2014 22:36:07 +0000 (UTC) From: "Rafael J. Wysocki" To: Theodore Ts'o Date: Sun, 01 Jun 2014 00:53:16 +0200 Message-ID: <5405523.QqPgB6FUft@vostro.rjw.lan> In-Reply-To: <20140531022106.GE20492@thunk.org> References: <5389363F.7090808@roeck-us.net> <20140531022106.GE20492@thunk.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7Bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Cc: James Bottomley , ksummit-discuss@lists.linuxfoundation.org Subject: Re: [Ksummit-discuss] More productive uses of enthusiastic new kernel developers List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , On Friday, May 30, 2014 10:21:06 PM Theodore Ts'o wrote: > On Fri, May 30, 2014 at 06:54:07PM -0700, Guenter Roeck wrote: > > > > I don't think this is a matter of being enthusiastic or not. Much more > > one of expertise. As a user of stable kernels, I would very much prefer > > to have it maintained by an expert (or by experts), not by a newcomer. > > Of course, that may be just me. > > The stable kernel tree would still be maintained by experts. Even if > newcomers supplied some of the backports, they would still get > reviewed by experts. Granted, for the first few patches it might not > save me that much time compared to my just doing the backport myself, > but it's IMHO much more likely to result in a capable programmer in > the long run (at least compared to people who are just encouraged to > do drive-by whitespace / spelling patch submissions). > > And if we have newcomers looking for bug fix patches that weren't > properly marked with "cc: stable@vger.kernel.org", and calling those > patches to the stable tree and subsystem maintainers, again, I think > it's healthier and certainly more productive than traning them to look > for whitespace and checkpatch.pl warnings. > > If the argument is that newcomers aren't motivated to do this sort of > grunt work, recall how much grunt work maintainers have to do. How > much time do you think most maintainers spend writing new sexy > features? As opposed to the less fun bits, such as reviewing code and > running integration tests and bisecting through submitted patches to > find the buggy "cleanup" patch someone sent me? > > If I can find people who don't mind sharing in some of the more less > glory-filled aspects of being an open source developer, and who isn't > afraid to do some of the less fun but still vitally important bits, > speaking personally, those are the people that I would be more > motivated to mentor. In contrast, someone who sends thousands of > whitespace patches is ***not*** someone I'm personally going to be > much inclined to spend time mentoring. I totally agree. Rafael