Re: [MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] Time to call it quits for the maintainer summit?

[James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@HansenPartnership.com>]

On Fri, 2026-08-07 at 19:19 -0400, Theodore Tso wrote:
[...]
> We can split this discussion a couple of different ways.  The first
> is how can we make the Maintainers Summit more valuable.  I do think
> that in the last couple of years, there *have* been a number of quite
> valuable discussions, but it's always worthwhile to consider ways in
> which we can improve the discussion.  So that's on the "benefits"
> side of the equation.

So I think we first need to start with the problem statement.  I think
it's that Linus doesn't go to any other conferences except MS, so for
him to discuss stuff with us in person, or us to discuss things with
him the issue has to be scheduled for MS.  Linus supplies an attendee
list for the former and a selection committee tries to put together the
latter ... is that about right?  For that second half, perhaps we
should talk about *how* we do this.  Mostly we go to our other
conferences and resolve stuff and run it by Linus in email, so no in-
person discussion is needed. However, perhaps we could do more active
gathering of the problems that might benefit from in-person discussion
than waiting for them to turn up on this list (or we could possibly
instruct all the maintainers to keep a curated list they dump here).

The second problem, as I see it is representation and franchise.  Dave
stated, and I agree, that MS isn't a representative decision making
body (no-one votes on stuff).  However, it does get treated as one in
certain circumstances: the conclave.rst document does and we also get
topics that are brought up at MS and then considered blessed for action
without wider discussion (expelling Russian Developers would be a great
example of this).  So we need to fix this dichotomy, either by making
it more representative or by being stricter about insisting on onward
discussion of outcomes.

The third problem is that the attendee list, however it is arrived at,
might not be the best at achieving all around discussion of the actual
scheduled topics because of the 'in-group' problem as Linus puts it. 
We could fix this by quite a few means, as has been discussed: lottery,
rotating invites among existing maintainers, etc.  However, I think the
core problem is that 30 people is too small to achieve this and some
form of expansion is going to have to be done.

Regards,

James