Re: [MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] Maintainer burnout

Hannes Reinecke
2023-08-22T09:05:37Z

On 8/22/23 09:41, Jiri Kosina wrote:
> On Mon, 21 Aug 2023, Laurent Pinchart wrote:
>
>>> It is not clear to me how to get honest answers without fear of
>>> loosing an ability to work with that subsystems later.
>>
>> One straightforward (on paper) option is to guarantee anonymity. When I
>> was in university, students were given the opportunity to provide
>> feedback on teachers, and the feedback was aggregated into a report that
>> didn't contain any personal information that could be used to identify
>> the students.
>
> I understand where you are coming from with this (my university did the
> same :) ), but in my view this has a huge potential for not really
> reflecting reality. Rationale being: the people who e.g. got their code
> rejected will naturally tend to provide negative feedback, even if
> rejecting the code was objectively the right thing to do.
>
> And vice versa.
>
I do see the advantage, but the main disadvantage here is that it's
eroding trust between people. Anonymous review tends to be used for
negative feedback, and I am aware that negative feedback to maintainers
can have a direct impact on your ability to work in that subsystem
(and believe me, I have been in that position. Several times.)
But in the end if you want to continue to work in that subsystem
you have to come to some sort of arrangement here.
I do believe that our maintainers are capable of differentiating
between personal and technical issues, so it should be possible
to work together despite personal ... (issues? differences?).

But none of the above will work if the feedback is anonymously.
Maintainer will have a reason for reacting that way, and won't
be able to explain themselves properly if they don't know whom
to address.

Cheers,

Hannes
--
Dr. Hannes Reinecke Kernel Storage Architect
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