From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from smtp1.linuxfoundation.org (smtp1.linux-foundation.org [172.17.192.35]) by mail.linuxfoundation.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 18130AB2 for ; Wed, 8 Jul 2015 19:30:05 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mout.gmx.net (mout.gmx.net [212.227.17.22]) by smtp1.linuxfoundation.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 6DF8EEB for ; Wed, 8 Jul 2015 19:30:04 +0000 (UTC) MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-ID: From: "Peter Huewe" To: "Jason Cooper" Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Date: Wed, 8 Jul 2015 21:29:57 +0200 In-Reply-To: <20150708140727.GH23515@io.lakedaemon.net> References: <201507080121.41463.PeterHuewe@gmx.de>, <20150708140727.GH23515@io.lakedaemon.net> Cc: ksummit-discuss@lists.linuxfoundation.org Subject: Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [CORE TOPIC] Recruitment (Reviewers, Testers, Maintainers, Hobbyists) List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Hey Jason, > > For testers it's usually even worse - how many patches are actually tested? > > Judging from what I read on LKML not that many. > > > > So we should definitely discuss: > > - how can we encourage hobbyists to become regular contributors > > -- how to keep people interested, the drop-out rates are huge. > > Here we need to have the correct mindset. Kernel development is hard, > detailed work. It's very rewarding, but simply put, most people aren't > cut out to do it. I view the dropout rate as a *good* thing. It's a > _selection_ process more than a education/training process. > > With most of the hard jobs in life, take a look at the > training/education program, and you'll see it: 80% drop out rate? > That's selection. Kernel work is one of those 'hard jobs'. > > This is important to realize because it changes how we view recruitment. > We shouldn't be trying to keep everybody we recruit. Rather, we should > be giving more people trial runs and see how they work out as they learn > the process. > > iow, if an 80% drop out rate gives us the caliber of dev we need for the > long term health of the community, then it's a numbers game. Say we saw > 40 new people last year, which turned into 8 regular contributors. Now > we want to double that. We can lower the standard to get 16 out > of 40, yuck. Or, we can outreach to 80 for trial runs, and get 16. I think that's an interesting take on the topic - although I'm not 100% whether I agree with everything. I agree that our goal is not to lower the standards, and also using more "trial runs". However high standards should not be the reason to drive people away -- and especially not the reason not to keep good people interested. Not only the bad people drop out, I've seen quite a lot of good devs vanish for good - and these should be the ones we also should try to keep - especially since I'm not sure whether we can allow such high drop out rates over a long time. > ... but because we need > to bring in new blood *somewhere*. co-maintainer/reviewer is one of > many possibilities. If we don't have enough slots for newcomers > (especially on a trial basis), that's our fault. Agreed. Interesting discussion about this topic - thanks for your opinion! Thanks, Peter