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

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Message-ID: <Z7dXIfFJ2qXNKtwT@phenom.ffwll.local>
Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2025 17:24:01 +0100
From: Simona Vetter <simona.vetter@...ll.ch>
To: David Airlie <airlied@...hat.com>
Cc: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@....edu>, "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 Thu, Feb 13, 2025 at 08:20:52PM +1000, David Airlie wrote:
> 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.

Agreed. I dropped a bit the ball on this, because at first I thought this
was only posted on part of the thread that wasn't cc'ed to dri-devel - I
can't pick a fight with the kernel community at large for everything that
happens. And then I let Dave handle this, because I couldn't come up with
anything that's not a nuclear table flip. 2 weeks later I'm still not
better, so let me instead express positively what kind of maintainership I
strive for by linking to an old talk of mine:

https://blog.ffwll.ch/2017/01/maintainers-dont-scale.html

> I'm open to suggestions for any better analogies.

Better analogy aside, I fundamentally disagree with understanding
maintainership as a gatekeeper role that exists to keep the chaos out. My
goal is to help build a community where people enjoy collaborating, and
then gtfo so I don't hinder them. I think the talk I linked above is
holding up quite well even years later, but the last part really embodies
that idea, so let me just quote that:

    Be a Steward, Not a Lord

    I think one of key advantages of open source is that people stick
    around for a very long time. Even when they switch jobs or move
    around. Maybe the usual “for life” qualifier isn’t really a great
    choice, since it sounds more like a mandatory sentence than something
    done by choice. What I object to is the “dictator” part, since if your
    goal is to grow a great community and maybe reach world domination,
    then you as the maintainer need to serve that community. And not that
    the community serves you.

Cheers, Sima
-- 
Simona Vetter
Software Engineer, Intel Corporation
http://blog.ffwll.ch