[Ksummit-discuss] [CORE TOPIC] (group) maintainership models

[Daniel Vetter <daniel.vetter@ffwll.ch>]

In my very first KS I found the maintainership model presentations
(x86-tip & armsoc) rather interesting. And last year we've had an
ad-hoc discussion about group maintainership again. I think drm&i915
would be an interesting case since over the past year I've done some
changes which are at the edge of what's common in the kernel, and it
seems to work (at least for us) fairly well. I discussed this a bit
with a few folks at ELC San Diego too.

Short summary: i915 has now a two-level maintenance model with 2
maintainers (who take the blame) and 15 people who can push patches.
In a way a rather big group, but not so big that people don't all know
each another any more personally. We have some detailed docs about the
patch flow and expectations:

https://01.org/linuxgraphics/gfx-docs/maintainer-tools/drm-intel.html

and about the dim tool used to support this all

https://01.org/linuxgraphics/gfx-docs/maintainer-tools/dim.html

But I think the more interesting bits are why I decided to try this
out, what I hoped would happen, what I feared might happen. And with 1
year of experience, what actually happens and what I think is needed
to make this work and an actual benefit over more traditional
maintainer models. And of course I'd like to compare notes with other
group maintainers.

Cheers, Daniel
-- 
Daniel Vetter
Software Engineer, Intel Corporation
+41 (0) 79 365 57 48 - http://blog.ffwll.ch