Re: [MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] Maintainer burnout

Leon Romanovsky
2023-08-22T13:47:51Z

On Tue, Aug 22, 2023 at 02:32:12PM +0300, Laurent Pinchart wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 22, 2023 at 02:05:23PM +0300, Leon Romanovsky wrote:
> > On Tue, Aug 22, 2023 at 11:46:13AM +0200, Jan Kara wrote:
> > > On Mon 21-08-23 21:23:18, Vegard Nossum wrote:
> > > > On 8/19/23 08:45, Leon Romanovsky wrote:
> > > > > It is worth to try to get honest feedback from active developers/contributors/vendors
> > > > > what is their "real" excuse for not doing code review.
> > > > >
> > > > > I saw in this thread about "have no time to do code review" answers and we
> > > > > all can relate to it, but IMHO it is just an excuse and not the real reason.
> > > > > Especially for a people who are employed by big corporations to do their
> > > > > upstream work.

<...>

> > > > The incentives that remain (as far as I can tell) are:
> > > >
> > > > 1) you get familiar with a specific part of the kernel, and
> > > > 2) you get goodwill and recognition from other kernel developers.
> > >
> > > I agree it is good to create positive incentives to provide good review.
> > > But I believe what really makes people do good reviews is the sense of
> > > common responsibility.
> >
> > Agree as long as "people" word includes whole community together with
> > maintainers to share common responsibility.
> >
> > Some maintainers feel too much ownership other their subsystems and it
> > causes to the lack of trust from everybody involved in the process and
> > common responsibility can't be built in that subsystems at all.
>
> Do we need to organize a workshop for maintainers on how to stop
> clinging to power ? I'm sure I could learn something there.

Probably, everyone who will attend that workshop will need to pass a
qualification exam what "maintainer" term means for different groups:
* Corporate management
* Community
* Other kernel developers

Thanks

>
> --
> Regards,
>
> Laurent Pinchart