Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] stable kernel process automation and improvement

[Jiri Kosina <jikos@kernel.org>]

On Mon, 8 Jul 2019, Greg KH wrote:

> Well, I think the conversation will go just like it has in the past for
> this issue:
> 	"We need to have someone track regressions!"
> 	"X said they would do it but they need to be paid, any company
> 	willing to sponsor this?"
> 	{crickets}

SUSE has actually been funding this for quite some time (back when Rafael 
was doing it), but it's really tricky.

We of course realize it's very important long-term activity, from which 
everybody profits.

At the same time, you need somebody who *really deeply* understands 
everything inside and around the kernel development, otherwise you get 
more harm and chaos than added value out of the whole excercise.

And if you have such a person (like we had Rafael), it's unlikely that 
person would want to do that work forever, and the funding company is also 
losing brainpower in other, more development-related areas (like PM in 
Rafael's case) at the same time.

So it's not as simple as "hey, you, company making money on linux, go pay 
someone to do this".

If I remember correctly (Rafael for sure would remember better), there 
were some attempts to have the regression tracking made by someone much 
more juniorish, but that person got of course immediately overwhelmed.

Thanks,

-- 
Jiri Kosina
SUSE Labs