linux-kernel - Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [PATCH v2 0/3] Maintainer Entry Profiles

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Message-ID: <92fb4141-8e2d-1139-2f55-b7100be8a2fd@acm.org>
Date:   Thu, 12 Sep 2019 14:10:02 +0100
From:   Bart Van Assche <bvanassche@....org>
To:     Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@...el.com>,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Cc:     Dave Jiang <dave.jiang@...el.com>,
        ksummit-discuss@...ts.linuxfoundation.org,
        linux-nvdimm@...ts.01.org,
        Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>,
        Steve French <stfrench@...rosoft.com>,
        Vishal Verma <vishal.l.verma@...el.com>,
        Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@...nel.org>,
        Dmitry Vyukov <dvyukov@...gle.com>,
        "Tobin C. Harding" <me@...in.cc>
Subject: Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [PATCH v2 0/3] Maintainer Entry Profiles

On 9/11/19 4:48 PM, Dan Williams wrote:
> At last years Plumbers Conference I proposed the Maintainer Entry
> Profile as a document that a maintainer can provide to set contributor
> expectations and provide fodder for a discussion between maintainers
> about the merits of different maintainer policies.
> 
> For those that did not attend, the goal of the Maintainer Entry Profile,
> and the Maintainer Handbook more generally, is to provide a desk
> reference for maintainers both new and experienced. The session
> introduction was:
> 
>     The first rule of kernel maintenance is that there are no hard and
>     fast rules. That state of affairs is both a blessing and a curse. It
>     has served the community well to be adaptable to the different
>     people and different problem spaces that inhabit the kernel
>     community. However, that variability also leads to inconsistent
>     experiences for contributors, little to no guidance for new
>     contributors, and unnecessary stress on current maintainers. There
>     are quite a few of people who have been around long enough to make
>     enough mistakes that they have gained some hard earned proficiency.
>     However if the kernel community expects to keep growing it needs to
>     be able both scale the maintainers it has and ramp new ones without
>     necessarily let them make a decades worth of mistakes to learn the
>     ropes. 
> 
> To be clear, the proposed document does not impose or suggest new
> rules. Instead it provides an outlet to document the unwritten rules
> and policies in effect for each subsystem, and that each subsystem
> might decide differently for whatever reason.

Any maintainer who reads this might interpret this as an encouragement
to establish custom policies. I think one of the conclusions of the
Linux Plumbers 2019 edition is that too much diversity is bad and that
we need more uniformity across kernel subsystems with regard what is
expected from patch contributors. I would appreciate if a summary of
https://linuxplumbersconf.org/event/4/contributions/554/attachments/353/584/Reflections__Kernel_Summit_2019.pdf
would be integrated in the maintainer handbook.

Thanks,

Bart.