From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from outgoing.mit.edu (outgoing-auth-1.mit.edu [18.9.28.11]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by smtp.subspace.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 64DE32D2397 for ; Fri, 7 Aug 2026 23:20:08 +0000 (UTC) Authentication-Results: smtp.subspace.kernel.org; arc=none smtp.client-ip=18.9.28.11 ARC-Seal:i=1; a=rsa-sha256; d=subspace.kernel.org; s=arc-20240116; t=1786144810; cv=none; b=AbIO3UvMnaLK+eqNK3naIZq4T3x3LC87X4S6aHD6ZW5A6+0FHAw6Esc5L+ViaRA277ZnjSedMXY0muWVfswcdqBYipm/vtDYaipkbunXUrwOlKu/Xqjuk/MITE7qwYpChZFZdONc6zk2ltAdvg9zttI6DbqaNcd/c+eXVkzAzCk= ARC-Message-Signature:i=1; a=rsa-sha256; d=subspace.kernel.org; s=arc-20240116; t=1786144810; c=relaxed/simple; bh=B0KTKw7/1wY45z+Ga29V9vUr2Zu1LmAEiDvoqlxrzds=; h=Date:From:To:Cc:Subject:Message-ID:References:MIME-Version: Content-Type:Content-Disposition:In-Reply-To; b=hDV21Ur/ZmlsWumPOrttsK6L30+YyhmgwR1VwZroUounKo2qXgjZeLGIviJzFTmMPw9Dij7QTYPuIuefZJS5sIu5wu9AM+vBIfCFweQsdYE9c3smmDaYl2rrKWnp5X5sfbfaIK0v/zGfaFmGD/MpIlCIi6THVBGPkw5pSKBusDk= ARC-Authentication-Results:i=1; smtp.subspace.kernel.org; dmarc=pass (p=none dis=none) header.from=mit.edu; spf=pass smtp.mailfrom=mit.edu; dkim=pass (2048-bit key) header.d=mit.edu header.i=@mit.edu header.b=F2HAWdSV; arc=none smtp.client-ip=18.9.28.11 Authentication-Results: smtp.subspace.kernel.org; dmarc=pass (p=none dis=none) header.from=mit.edu Authentication-Results: smtp.subspace.kernel.org; spf=pass smtp.mailfrom=mit.edu Authentication-Results: smtp.subspace.kernel.org; dkim=pass (2048-bit key) header.d=mit.edu header.i=@mit.edu header.b="F2HAWdSV" Received: from macsyma.thunk.org ([67.208.186.90]) (authenticated bits=0) (User authenticated as tytso@ATHENA.MIT.EDU) by outgoing.mit.edu (8.14.7/8.12.4) with ESMTP id 677NJw2u015733 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 bits=256 verify=NOT); Fri, 7 Aug 2026 19:19:59 -0400 DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=mit.edu; s=outgoing; t=1786144800; bh=u6TVoU043MV9/ZombO8uFwghfi0gMQSwLVkOmWrMYqI=; h=Date:From:Subject:Message-ID:MIME-Version:Content-Type; b=F2HAWdSVNEfgL8OpgxD4rkeDyE6LB305I3DFstQs/NZIgKcbTpLyvHt4CkMyXwJDG eXgwJ4wXcqAJ03H9iB/DeR6I1+/H4MKA/4MyspZIfi859KnGaPHHJvtrh1DovzhU+G Bds1Ahq2ymOqE0HFz8MF9fsQcKqFkOqMzx2ThIos/y+Cxk7qehKu5QJ9ukMdUgufrx qnUHFIrSA72OgghQ0lVw+LwbFgWkldYKtGpun5GjpILv/h+hXRRRRQfVxqwBzkyt7B gAv11cdegfObyB7BI7vepYpi+Ie/7MxFJo2iQEMKrd3iMrEL/3GrJZEDePmCAMw1v3 LeyCdq9uc3pdQ== Received: by macsyma.thunk.org (Postfix, from userid 15806) id 183C0DE9978; Fri, 7 Aug 2026 19:19:57 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 7 Aug 2026 19:19:57 -0400 From: "Theodore Tso" To: James Bottomley Cc: ksummit@lists.linux.dev Subject: Re: [MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] Time to call it quits for the maintainer summit? Message-ID: References: <8ae41b73983eee6ba716a61b8701df6522a02baa.camel@HansenPartnership.com> Precedence: bulk X-Mailing-List: ksummit@lists.linux.dev List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <8ae41b73983eee6ba716a61b8701df6522a02baa.camel@HansenPartnership.com> On Thu, Aug 06, 2026 at 11:34:09AM -0500, James Bottomley wrote: > It continued as a 2 day event co-located with > Ottawa Linux Symposium (still run by USENIX) until 2008 when it mostly > co-located with Plumbers and was run by the LF. In 2015 Linus > complained that he didn't find the KS talks that valuable and he'd like > to discuss process with a smaller audience, so in 2016 the kernel > summit was split and the talks went to the kernel summit track in > Plumbers and a 1 day Maintainer Summit was born. When the Kernel Summit grew from ~50 people to a bit over 150 people, it started getting a lot more unwieldy, and it became impossible to make sure all of the people needed for a particular technical topic could be issued invites. The flip side was that when there was that many people in the room, it was too hard to have focused process discussions. So that was the reason why the the split took place; it was getting too large for process discussions, and it was too small for technical discussions. Today, the Maintainer Summit is basically a half-day event, with around 30 people (plus any sponsored attendees), and is only focused on process questions, with the technical discussions taking place at the Plumbers Conference where it is colocated --- the miniconferences, Refereed and Kernel Summit tracker, and the BOF's. And I think that's worked pretty well. As such, the costs of the Maintainers Summit is actually pretty cheap, especiallly since there is no A/V, and a room that can hold ~30 people is not really that big of deal. So I doubt it is as expensive as what James has estimated. If we did want to economize, we could do things like drop the Kernel Summit dinner and the "sponsor gift". I can talk to the Linux Foundation to see what they are willing to fund, but given some of the process discussions that have taken place such as "The End of the Rust Experiment"[1], and the discussions around AI that almost certianly will take place this year, I think the value Maintainer Summit is one where hopefully the LF would be willing to support it one way or another. [1] https://lwn.net/Articles/1049831/ 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. The second is on the "costs" side of the equation. There are a couple of things, such as the dinner and the gift, that we can almost certainly slim down, if this is becoming too much of a burden to the LF. Getting more sponsorship dollars is going to be challenging. When we had the the technical content in the Kernel Summit as part of the invite-only portion of the event, companies would pay $$$ because they wanted to introduce specific technical ideas, to better support their products because what they were paying for was the attention of the Kernel Developers. This "attention economy" dynamic is one of the things that does still work and drives sponsorship with LSF/MM, by the way. - Ted