[MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] Merge tree too flat?

[Jiri Kosina <jikos@kernel.org>]

On last year's maintainer summit, there was a session where Linus asked 
the participants to bring up topics / questions [1].

I myself was the one raising the concern of the merge tree feeling a 
little bit too flat, and there seemed to be general agreement on that.

Checking the git repository as of now, it seems like we have not changed 
anything in that respect over the past year, and a lot of things are going 
directly to Linus although they could be cascaded a little bit better, 
contributing to better load-balancing on all maintainer levels (including 
the top-level one, of course).

I'd like to propose this as a proper discussion topic slot this year, by 
e.g. looking at:

- the actual numbers and current merge graph

- is this really something that could improve maintainer load (on all 
  levels) and throughput if done properly?

- how could we motivate maintainers to change the process and delegate 
  more into proper hierarchical sub-trees?

- potentially identify particular trees and changes that could be made in
  the merge graph/path to improve the process

[1] https://lwn.net/Articles/952146/

-- 
Jiri Kosina
SUSE Labs