From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from mail-yw1-f177.google.com (mail-yw1-f177.google.com [209.85.128.177]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 (128/128 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by smtp.subspace.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id CF2C817AC1 for ; Fri, 18 Aug 2023 13:55:24 +0000 (UTC) Received: by mail-yw1-f177.google.com with SMTP id 00721157ae682-58dce1f42d6so28512227b3.0 for ; Fri, 18 Aug 2023 06:55:24 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=linaro.org; s=google; t=1692366923; x=1692971723; h=content-transfer-encoding:cc:to:subject:message-id:date:from :in-reply-to:references:mime-version:from:to:cc:subject:date :message-id:reply-to; bh=kcVynaghOLRwf6wamOBYsp7RCU5zMFSYjXG6h0xZn7U=; b=auZQYMw4RvzvYTkaw0iA5WgDJ5/F/xlUaxhPKZtYW74r9A4lwElsVutEWgXdMOo3RX EqO+ipySzu6wmBQOSw4CVUZtHKhFwRFA3B/wwDcWve2unNapKKTnyFZHlYjZSDdcXczN b9DqpSlBdL62GZZDdqEbTc7BlrwdN4pzT5SMpUjs06yeTsMOc1+zxlJVoHKjbBUsu1JH JNi5sJXS8bPFLeV0KG+y5WzU3pNU08kimvzz1vo18npC5iD7IEcWtlBTFq52mg7p7CgX Z0u0FYEXrSJ0GPwfeTxFLvNpeEDwfG1XhCaKwoVEN+vD7ocbPNZx4i3eOZ4v/hZ1bBIM J8SA== X-Google-DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=1e100.net; s=20221208; t=1692366923; x=1692971723; h=content-transfer-encoding:cc:to:subject:message-id:date:from :in-reply-to:references:mime-version:x-gm-message-state:from:to:cc :subject:date:message-id:reply-to; bh=kcVynaghOLRwf6wamOBYsp7RCU5zMFSYjXG6h0xZn7U=; b=N+m/hFBelySoqigRdebLg5cKXqX0MhJFNDZU9uNrZVeY4EOSOlJ5B9cgNvKUfw09bL BJFPPxD3PTlpIXeGbMZeUAYBMEhfNS8qAMW1KJuU5UY40CieHH+X9UTxus2ICr/ez7VK 6XeI71T6OOBsFUgetsJxTDrvIGCRWQeODBZlk5IQabrrR/d8Yd4xCVDEIJuRY3lIL/bP /Aq0szS6jp3BjqTEZgnJ2NgOKxpPRWb1BUyWHwdw7utQssgNT8wcKmoZDTUlGWweNuax xaH9DId1YVyTy4hD1QOxhvjFSqZkM98pxE3447GxbGJ0zQW03Uave1u3eMQLPiBN0O79 XmSg== X-Gm-Message-State: AOJu0YySUqMI002YE6mcHiMcueg1zNSea9Rlw0FNvevzelGYEss8Pqsq 1oMq5igmAtcijR55bfOv+sBFdsabf8pu5B5HZyZNqQ== X-Google-Smtp-Source: AGHT+IHQafc8T4Gp6XwA8TbZicJ84+oi6cirQ2Sbg0tviU+IiHXOQy/u9XB9GgStnP4O6/cTyyowTLv9wg2vqyGRkE0= X-Received: by 2002:a25:317:0:b0:ceb:8b27:b7fe with SMTP id 23-20020a250317000000b00ceb8b27b7femr3204092ybd.27.1692366923585; Fri, 18 Aug 2023 06:55:23 -0700 (PDT) Precedence: bulk X-Mailing-List: ksummit@lists.linux.dev List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <20230816180808.GB2919664@perftesting> <20230817093914.GE21668@pendragon.ideasonboard.com> <44814ed5-7bab-4e56-9ca6-189870f97f41@lunn.ch> <20230817081957.1287b966@kernel.org> In-Reply-To: From: Linus Walleij Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2023 15:55:11 +0200 Message-ID: Subject: Re: [MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] Maintainer burnout To: Alexei Starovoitov Cc: Jakub Kicinski , Andrew Lunn , Laurent Pinchart , Luis Chamberlain , Josef Bacik , ksummit@lists.linux.dev, Jeff Layton , Song Liu Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Alexei, thanks for returning the conversation to this very important topic. On Fri, Aug 18, 2023 at 1:55=E2=80=AFAM Alexei Starovoitov wrote: > BPF has solid CI that helps a lot, but the maintainer burnout is acutely = felt. > The main reason for burnout is patch flood. I agree this is an important cause. Even worse is any kind of social conflict or bad mood in the community. Science has studied stress, what we mostly run into is called "microstress"= . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_stress > The maintainer's day looks like non-stop code review. > The patch backlog just doesn't end. I've been there too :( > We're trying to encourage active developers to be code reviewers as well > via positive/negative scores: > https://lore.kernel.org/bpf/ZJx8sBW%2FQPOBswNF@google.com/ > > It doesn't help much yet. All incoming kernel contributors assume > that it's a maintainer's job to do code reviews. > Developers just send patches and wait. It doesn't occur to them that > reviewing other patches will help them land their own. The DRI/DRM community has group maintainership that works a little bit. Essentially it boils down to ask people to review your stuff and you will review and also merge their stuff in return. Sometimes this works. Especially if you are a circle of acquaintances working full time on similar things, yay! So much support. When you are a sporadic contributor it doesn't work as well. Because you cannot always find some matching contribution to review and you feel like begging. So different solutions for different contributors may be needed. > To address maintainer burnout we need to change the culture of the commun= ity > and transform active developers to active code reviewers. > We're looking for ideas on how to do that. I agree. To deal with the symptoms (feeling stressed) when it gets too much for me personally I have different coping mechanisms. The basic idea is to do stuff that generate the opposite of stress. This could be outside of work, but also working on stuff in the kernel that gives a feeling of immediate accomplishment and closure is good. Such as maintaining some drivers and systems that are old, so nobody is begging you to fix it now now now. Paying of some old techical debt. That's nice. Drilling into a specific bug that is not urgent can also be very de-stressing, it's hard work but nobody is dependent on you fixing it now. You don't even need to come up with a solution. Yours, Linus Walleij