linux-kernel - Re: 5.10 LTS Kernel: 2 or 6 years?

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Message-ID: <20210218182050.GB15217@1wt.eu>
Date:   Thu, 18 Feb 2021 19:20:50 +0100
From:   Willy Tarreau <w@....eu>
To:     Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>
Cc:     Florian Fainelli <f.fainelli@...il.com>,
        Sasha Levin <sashal@...nel.org>,
        BCM Kernel Feedback <bcm-kernel-feedback-list@...adcom.com>,
        LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        Linux ARM <linux-arm-kernel@...ts.infradead.org>,
        Scott Branden <scott.branden@...adcom.com>
Subject: Re: 5.10 LTS Kernel: 2 or 6 years?

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 06:53:56PM +0100, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 09:21:13AM -0800, Florian Fainelli wrote:
> > As a company, we are most likely shooting ourselves in the foot by not
> > having a point of coordination with the Linux Foundation and key people
> > like you, Greg and other participants in the stable kernel.
> 
> What does the LF have to do with this?
> 
> We are here, on the mailing lists, working with everyone.  Just test the
> -rc releases we make and let us know if they work or not for you, it's
> not a lot of "coordination" needed at all.
> 
> Otherwise, if no one is saying that they are going to need these for 6
> years and are willing to use it in their project (i.e. and test it),
> there's no need for us to maintain it for that long, right?

Greg, please remember I expressed I really need them for slightly more than
3 years (say 3.5-4) :-) I'm fine with helping a bit more as time permits if
this saves me from having to take over these kernels after you, like in the
past, but I cannot engage on the regularity of my availability.

Overall I think that a lot of people completely underestimate the amount
of work it requires to maintain stable kernels, and how much it could be
distributed. By having a bunch of users participate a little bit more
(e.g. by sometimes backporting the patches that are essential to them,
by testing what's relevant to their use case), it already offloads a lot
of work. I don't think the extra work requires to be much organized if
there are enough participants to share the efforts.

Regards,
Willy