Re: [MAINTAINER SUMMIT] Folios as a potential Kernel/Maintainers Summit topic?

Konstantin Ryabitsev
2021-09-16T21:00:49Z

On Thu, Sep 16, 2021 at 08:38:13PM +0000, Chris Mason wrote:
> Agree here. Mailing lists make it really hard to figure out when these
> conflicts are resolved, which is why I love using google docs for that part.

I would caution that Google docs aren't universally accessible. China blocks
access to many Google resources, and now Russia purportedly does the same.
Perhaps a similar effect can be reached with a git repository with limited
commit access? At least then commits can be attested to individual authors.

> A living document with a single source of truth on key design points, work
> remaining, and stakeholders who are responsible for ack/nack decisions.
> Basically if you don’t have edit permissions on the document, you’re not one
> of the people that can say no.
>
> If you do have edit permissions, you’re expected to be on board with the
> overall goal and help work through the design/validation/code/etc until
> you’re ready to ack it, or until it’s clear the whole thing isn’t going to
> work. If you feel you need to have edit permissions, you’ve got a defined
> set of people to talk with about it.
>
> It can’t completely replace the mailing lists, but it can take a lot of the
> archeology out of understanding a given patch series and figuring out if
> it’s actually ready to go.

You can combine the two and use mailing lists as the source of truth by using
Link: tags in commits to make it easy to verify history and provenance.

-K