RFC: switching "THE REST" in MAINTAINERS away from linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org

Konstantin Ryabitsev
2023-11-06T15:33:22Z

Hello, all:

About 70% of all vger traffic is linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org ("LKML"), which
is explained by the following 2 facts:

1. There are ~2900 subscribers to that list
2. It is added to all patches because it has "F: *" in MAINTAINERS

In the past month alone that list received 33,000 posts, which translates to
about 3.1 million messages delivered daily. This has pretty critical
downsides:

- due to the sheer volume of messages, LKML is generally seen as useless for
holding any actual discussions
- people tend to subscribe gmail accounts to it and then filter out what they
don't want
- due to gmail's quota policies, this generally results in anywhere from 50K to
200K messages stuck in the queue all trying to deliver to gmail and being
deferred with "this account is receiving too much mail"

For this reason, I propose switching the "F: *" entry in MAINTAINERS
("THE REST") to patches@lists.linux.dev instead. This list differs from LKML
in the following important aspects:

- it allows unrestricted posting, but
- all subscriptions must be pre-moderated, with the goal to only allow bot
accounts to receive patches sent to that list (e.g. currently only the 0-day
bot is subscribed)
- it is made available via public-inbox/lei and anonymous POP3, so those who
want to still be able to have it delivered into their Gmail inbox will be
able to set it up via POP3 import functionality (docs forthcoming)

This should improve the situation as follows:

- reduce the traffic seen on LKML to more reasonable volumes
- eventually get things to the point where sending something to
linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org will be a reasonable action and not just
screaming into the void (spitting into hurricane-force gale?)
- unclog the outgoing queues and speed up mail delivery for everyone

Please let me know your thoughts. I will also be happy to discuss this at the
upcoming kernel/maintainer summit.

-K