From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1754274AbXD2DEi (ORCPT ); Sat, 28 Apr 2007 23:04:38 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1754286AbXD2DEh (ORCPT ); Sat, 28 Apr 2007 23:04:37 -0400 Received: from smtp1.linux-foundation.org ([65.172.181.25]:40509 "EHLO smtp1.linux-foundation.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1754262AbXD2DEg (ORCPT ); Sat, 28 Apr 2007 23:04:36 -0400 Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2007 20:03:53 -0700 From: Andrew Morton To: Neil Brown Cc: "Martin J. Bligh" , Linus Torvalds , Diego Calleja , Chuck Ebbert , Adrian Bunk , Linux Kernel Mailing List Subject: Re: Linux 2.6.21 Message-Id: <20070428200353.c6638cca.akpm@linux-foundation.org> In-Reply-To: <17971.50834.907414.761549@notabene.brown> References: <20070426040806.GJ3468@stusta.de> <20070426125802.GL3468@stusta.de> <4630DB24.4030005@redhat.com> <20070426201325.8a1ebda3.diegocg@gmail.com> <20070426224148.69b91b2e.diegocg@gmail.com> <46339BC7.6050802@mbligh.org> <17971.50834.907414.761549@notabene.brown> X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 2.2.7 (GTK+ 2.8.17; x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Sun, 29 Apr 2007 08:11:30 +1000 Neil Brown wrote: > On Saturday April 28, mbligh@mbligh.org wrote: > > > > Yes, human involvement from someone with half a brain would be better. > > Andrew does a lot of that. Not a particularly good use of talent really. > > but still. > > I think more than half a brain is needed to do this well. You need a > reasonable understanding of how all the bits of the kernel work > together so that you have a good chance of sending the bug in the right > direction. You need a good understanding of the kernel community and > various sub communities so that you know who might be both able and > willing to deal with the bug. And it wouldn't hurt to have a good > over-view of the current 'hot' areas of the kernel so you know if it > is really worth suggesting "try with the latest -mm" or not. > And you need good people skills. > > So I think you really need a lot of up-to-date knowledge to do this > well. Because of Andrew's position as a funnel, he has a lot of that > knowledge. yup > It would be really nice if he had some help though. Amen, Brother Neil. > And I > really think that would mean finding someone in the community who > would rather be coding (and currently are) and convincing them that > there is a higher calling for them. Finding someone out side or on > the edge of the community is less likely to be effective. http://www.google.com/support/jobs/bin/answer.py?answer=53317 This is a fully funded regular full-time position @google's Mountain View HQ, sitting within nagging range of myself, doing precisely what you describe. Unfortunately the recruiting has been a bit tricky - this is not a typical job and it's a funny mixture of bureaucracy/politics/social engineering and programming. People who are skilled in both areas, are, ah, uncommon. But it will happen eventually. Meanwhile I - ensure that all bugzilla reports are routed to the relevant maintainer - ensure that all those who reported bugs via email are later asked to raise bugzilla reports if it didn't get fixed (but I only monitor one list!) - continue to file away all the real-looking bugzillas with the intention of generating aggregated reports, but you know how it is.