linux-kernel - Re: [Ksummit-2008-discuss] Fixing the Kernel Janitors project

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Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0805291656000.6718@jikos.suse.cz>
Date:	Thu, 29 May 2008 17:06:15 +0200 (CEST)
From:	Jiri Kosina <jkosina@...e.cz>
To:	James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@...senPartnership.com>
cc:	David Miller <davem@...emloft.net>,
	ksummit-2008-discuss@...ts.linux-foundation.org,
	penberg@...helsinki.fi, dwmw2@...radead.org,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [Ksummit-2008-discuss] Fixing the Kernel Janitors project

On Thu, 29 May 2008, James Bottomley wrote:

> Really, I think that's what our mistake is in the recruitment program 
> is: we need to start people out on useful tasks that they can do rather 
> than on tasks we find annoying and useless in the hope they move on to 
> something better.

I fully agree, but my impression is that this really is not going to be 
easy. Fixing bugs definitely is a good way to start kernel coding -- it 
forces you to understand the internals of the source, get used to the 
coding style by reading the code, etc. Unfortunately, it's simply not very 
attractive for newcomers.

For example -- I am leading a seminar at university, oriented at linux 
kernel internals. I provide the possibility to students either to

- write some stand-alone interesting kernel project
- fix a few non-trivial bugs in kernel bugzilla
- chose any part of a kernel, learn how it works, and present this to 
  other seminar attendees

The feedback I often get from students (and these guys are studying 
computer science) is

- writing some wholy new interesting kernel project is usually too 
  complicated (both coming with an interesting idea for a project, and 
  doing the coding itself)
- fixing random bugs from kernel bugzilla is boring (spending 10 hours 
  looking for missing '=' doesn't really attract them)

So in overwhelming majority of cases, they just chose the presentation.

All I want to say is that I could very well imagine that a lot of 
newcomers will find "hey, feel free to crawl through bugzilla and fix 
whatever you are able to fix" very non-attractive.
Not that I have any better idea right now, though.

-- 
Jiri Kosina
SUSE Labs
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