Re: [MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] Maintainers Support Group

[Shuah <shuah@kernel.org>]

On 9/19/23 17:21, Steven Rostedt wrote:
> On Tue, 19 Sep 2023 16:55:29 -0600
> Shuah <shuah@kernel.org> 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.

> 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.

thanks,
-- Shuah