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

["Lorenzo Stoakes (ARM)" <ljs@kernel.org>]

On Fri, Aug 07, 2026 at 10:27:27AM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> The maintainer summit being a pretty constant "in-group" is
> fundamental, but it still feels a bit sad and wrong to me.

It feels less like a naturally emerging in-group and more like a clique,
and I've heard the same view expressed to me by a good few other
maintainers.

Its exclusivity is pretty well signalled ([0]):

	"The Linux Kernel Maintainer Summit brings together the world’s
	leading core kernel developers to discuss the state of the existing
	kernel and plan the next development cycle. This is an invite-only
	event."

The procedure for selecting attendees is rather vague ([1]):

	"Linus has generated a list of people for the program committee to
	consider. People who suggest topics that should be discussed at the
	Maintainers Summit will also be added to the list for
	consideration. ... Late submissions will be considered, but people
	submit submissions before September 10th will be considered for
	receiving an invite."

Though seemed to change (maybe?) for 2026 ([2]):

	"The attendees are jointly selected by Linus Torvlads (who has
	provided us with a roughly a dozen maintainers that he would like
	to attend), and the program committee, who choose from maintainers
	and developers who have been the most active in the past year.
	... Anybody proposing a topic before July 24th will be added to the
	list of potential attendees selected by the program committee ... "

All of this seems to tie topic submission with attendance.

It's a little unclear too whether somebody submitting a topic is also
proposing to present it at the session or not. It's somewhat implied but it
doesn't seem to be the case in practice.

For instance, I made a submission last year (I was nagged to by somebody :)
but I had no expectation of being invited as I did not (nor do not)
consider myself anywhere near elite or established enough to fulfil the
criteria above.

I was however slightly disappointed that a session was run on essentially
the same topic I submitted and whose summary ([3], read out at the start)
was posted in the same thread.

The session was run by Sasha who hadn't submitted a topic that year (Jiri
had also made a submission related to LLMs but more specifically about
kernel patch attribution, though he did attend).

That experience overall made it seem very vague as to how topic selection,
who runs the session and attendance actually works.

So at the very least some clarity is needed.

Ted's data from elsewhere in this thread is also rather misleading I feel:

  # Summits
  Attended   #      %
  ------------------------
  4          9    18.37%
  3          8    16.33%
  2         10    20.41%
  1         22    44.90%

It's dealing in people but not seats - i.e. actual conference attendances.

Consider:

  # Summits
  Attended   #      %
  ------------------------
  4         27    55.10%
  1         22    44.90%

It'd _still_ suggest that there was a healthy 44.9% of new faces, even
though this would mean that 83% of every conference was the exact same
people :)

What's missing is factoring in the # summits attended.

So by Ted's data there were 102 seats over the 4 years (9 * 4 + 8 * 3 + 10
* 2 + 22 * 1).

Taking that into account the numbers look very different:

  # Summits
  Attended   #    Seats occupied   %    Cuml %
  --------------------------------------------
  4          9          36       35.3     35.3
  3          8          24       23.5     58.8
  2         10          20       19.6     78.4
  1         22          22       21.6    100.0

That puts the number of seats filled by one-time attendees at any
conference at 21.6%, not 44.9%.

It means that 78.4% of the seats at any given summit on average are filled
by repeat attendees, with 58.8% on average filled by people who attended 3
or 4 conferences.

Which entirely backs up that it is a clique - the same majority in every
room.

Also, the committee who select attendees (through unclear criteria) are
themselves drawn from that same core of repeat attendees.

I mean I don't know, maybe it's necessary to run it as a tight ship of
trusted people, but I think we should at least be more clear about that.

However I wonder whether we should look at an alternative approach like
those with M: entries in MAINTAINERS voting on topics, or something
similar.

Not sure if that's a good or terrible idea but it's something :)

--
Cheers, Lorenzo

[0]:https://events.linuxfoundation.org/linux-kernel-maintainer-summit/
[1]:https://lore.kernel.org/all/20250805144357.GA762104@mit.edu/
[2]:https://lore.kernel.org/all/alW3eJ9x6iJ8Juhi@mit.edu/
[3]:https://lore.kernel.org/all/aTYmE53i3FJ_lJH2@laps/