linux-kernel - Re: On community influencing (was Re: [PATCH v8 2/2] rust: add dma coherent allocator abstraction.)

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Message-ID: <CAMwc25pxz2+B329BArDQMpxOvpMtvhop1u_Uwc0axn2LqNP0vA@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2025 20:20:52 +1000
From: David Airlie <airlied@...hat.com>
To: "Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@....edu>
Cc: "Dr. Greg" <greg@...ellic.com>, Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>, 
	Hector Martin <marcan@...can.st>, Dave Airlie <airlied@...il.com>, Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@...dia.com>, 
	Greg KH <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>, phasta@...nel.org, 
	Christoph Hellwig <hch@....de>, Danilo Krummrich <dakr@...nel.org>, 
	Miguel Ojeda <miguel.ojeda.sandonis@...il.com>, 
	Abdiel Janulgue <abdiel.janulgue@...il.com>, daniel.almeida@...labora.com, 
	aliceryhl@...gle.com, robin.murphy@....com, rust-for-linux@...r.kernel.org, 
	Miguel Ojeda <ojeda@...nel.org>, Alex Gaynor <alex.gaynor@...il.com>, 
	Boqun Feng <boqun.feng@...il.com>, Gary Guo <gary@...yguo.net>, 
	"Bj??rn Roy Baron" <bjorn3_gh@...tonmail.com>, Benno Lossin <benno.lossin@...ton.me>, 
	Andreas Hindborg <a.hindborg@...nel.org>, Trevor Gross <tmgross@...ch.edu>, 
	Valentin Obst <kernel@...entinobst.de>, open list <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>, 
	Marek Szyprowski <m.szyprowski@...sung.com>, 
	"open list:DMA MAPPING HELPERS" <iommu@...ts.linux.dev>, DRI Development <dri-devel@...ts.freedesktop.org>
Subject: Re: On community influencing (was Re: [PATCH v8 2/2] rust: add dma
 coherent allocator abstraction.)

On Sun, Feb 9, 2025 at 6:48 AM Theodore Ts'o <tytso@....edu> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Feb 07, 2025 at 06:16:38AM -0600, Dr. Greg wrote:
> >
> > The all powerful sub-system maintainer model works well if the big
> > technology companies can employ omniscient individuals in these roles,
> > but those types are a bit hard to come by.
>
> I'll let you in a secret.  The maintainers are not "all-powerfui".  We
> are the "thin blue line" that is trying to keep the code to be
> maintainable and high quality.  Like most leaders of volunteer
> organization, whether it is the Internet Engineerint Task Force (the
> standards body for the Internet), we actually have very little power.
> We can not *command* people to work on retiring technical debt, or to
> improve testing infrastructure, or work on some particular feature
> that we'd very like for our users.

Just as a courtesy to others can we not use the "thin blue line"
analogy in this community, it has had some bad connotation thrown on
it in the US context over the past few years, and I'd rather not as a
maintainer be aligned with current connotation/interpretations of it,
despite having family involved in our local force.

I'm open to suggestions for any better analogies.

Dave.