[MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] Transparency when rejecting patches without technical reason

[MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] Transparency when rejecting patches without technical reason

[Wolfram Sang]

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Hi all,

this obviously aims at the rejection of networking patches from Baikal
Electronics in March. I only got to know about this yesterday when
reading comments about Debian now supporting the LoongArch architecture.

I admit I thought we accept / reject patches purely because of technical
reasons. If this turns out not to be possible, can we at least agree on
giving detailed reasons then? Like, was it a personal opinion? Was it
because of sanctions? Without reasons as in [1], it makes discussion
harder. And I think we need discussions here to negotiate common
grounds.

With regards,

   Wolfram

[1] https://lwn.net/ml/netdev/20230314103316.313e5f61@kernel.org/


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Re: [MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] Transparency when rejecting patches without technical reason

[Linus Torvalds]

On Fri, 18 Aug 2023 at 13:44, Wolfram Sang <wsa@kernel.org> wrote:
>>
> this obviously aims at the rejection of networking patches from Baikal
> Electronics in March. I only got to know about this yesterday when
> reading comments about Debian now supporting the LoongArch architecture.
>
> I admit I thought we accept / reject patches purely because of technical
> reasons.

Honestly, technical reasons are a "minimum requirement".

But there are clearly other reasons, and always have been. Including
simply the fact that we have to trust the source of the patch. Things
like "will you support this going forward".

Maintainers have to be comfortable with the source of the code. And
not all maintainers can work with all people. That has always been
true.

This wasn't even remotely a gray area.  It's not worth discussing.

                Linus

Re: [MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] Transparency when rejecting patches without technical reason

[Wolfram Sang]

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Hi Linus,

> This wasn't even remotely a gray area.  It's not worth discussing.

I hope you understood that my wish for transparency was not about
discussing if the patches should have gone in or not. It is about
discussing or at least stating which reasons we have for not accepting
patches. From the netdev maintainers reply, I couldn't understand if
being "uncomfortable" was because of personal or juristic reasons. As a
result, I was unsure what to do if such patches would have landed in my
subsystem. If it was personal, then I may or may not have a different
opinion, OK. If it was jurisitc, then it might be wise to follow their
expertise. Of course, I could have asked the netdev maintainers. But if
it is written right away, it makes things easier, or so I thought...

Regards,

   Wolfram


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Re: [MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] Transparency when rejecting patches without technical reason

[Linus Torvalds]

On Sat, 19 Aug 2023 at 18:22, Wolfram Sang <wsa@kernel.org> wrote:
>
> I hope you understood that my wish for transparency was not about
> discussing if the patches should have gone in or not. It is about
> discussing or at least stating which reasons we have for not accepting
> patches.

I don't think there is any value at all in discussing hypotheticals.

But I will say that the next time some has-been superpower ends up
with a premier that goes crazy and starts attacking other countries,
we'll do the same thing.

So that's certainly _one_ reason to not take patches.

But let's hope that one reason ends up never being relevant again, and
as such not really worth discussing (and it's sure as hell not worth
debating).

And other reasons? I don't think most people had "Russia ends up going
rogue, so kernel developers stop taking patches from state-sponsored
actors" on their bingo card in 2021. I certainly didn't.

So unless you have a crystal ball and can predict what the next event
that would cause us to not accept patches would look like, what is
there to discuss?

That's kind of my point.

The Russian situation isn't worth discussing - anybody who wants to
debate it is simply not anybody I want to spend one second debating
*with*.

And any future situation is so hypothetical as to not seemingly be
worth discussing either, unless you have some inside information.

We'll have to take them as they come, and the best we can probably do
is to just hope we don't ever see anything similar in the future.

               Linus

Re: [MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] Transparency when rejecting patches without technical reason

[Wolfram Sang]

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> So unless you have a crystal ball and can predict what the next event
> that would cause us to not accept patches would look like, what is
> there to discuss?
> 
> That's kind of my point.

First, thank you for these answers. They provide further information I
was initially looking for to get a better understanding of the
situation. I was simply wondering if we couldn't provide such
information right away, but maybe you are right with that it is hardly
forseeable and, thus, managable. It is probably easiest to ask the
involved people directly next time. And I am all with you, I sincerely
hope there will be no next time!


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