Development practices?

[Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk <konrad.wilk@oracle.com>]

Hey,

I've noticed a couple of things that the community seems
to be doing different than other open source projects and
was wondering why? And also how to conform to this (or perhaps
it is time to change?) so that ideas/releases/patches can move forward.

 - Patches are not posted by committers. I see some patches that
   appear out of nowhere in the grub source code but they
   don't seem to be posted on the mailing list? Is that because
   there hadn't been enough reviewers on the mailing list?
   Which brings another question:

 - Some patches have been posted and hadn't much any architecture
   feedback or review. I am referring to Daniel's multboot2
   extensions and the ARM multiboot implementation for example.

   Is that due to the tradition (not sure if that is the right
   word) that there aren't enough reviewers so folks shouldn't
   expect reviews?

 - Some patches that are in the git tree don't seem to have the
   Signed-Off-By which I find odd (*1). Patches that come from
   non-maintainers have them, but the maintainers/committers don't
   always? Is that because the committers have signed some form
   of 'implicit-Signed-off-by-when-I-check-in' document?


I don't know enough about the community (or the history) to
understand it but would very much appreciate input.
And if I have offended somebody with my questions + feeble
analysis: my deepest apologies - and please straighten me out!


From what I have gathered so far the not enough reviewers
is tied in folks being overworked - so there simply was no
point of posting on the mailing list as nobody had the time
to review it or test it properly?

[*1]: My background is in Linux kernel and Xen Project.