From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from outgoing.mit.edu (outgoing-auth-1.mit.edu [18.9.28.11]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by smtp.subspace.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 1DA572DA74C for ; Sun, 9 Aug 2026 01:51:30 +0000 (UTC) Authentication-Results: smtp.subspace.kernel.org; arc=none smtp.client-ip=18.9.28.11 ARC-Seal:i=1; a=rsa-sha256; d=subspace.kernel.org; s=arc-20240116; t=1786240292; cv=none; b=eLWScam0e2BAtAcCO2DEs5FrVCDxtWAcBJaZvKzjaPxooIUbIGDwQtQjm8AQ8UDJYiJ77bqGSnvfSsX7npS0RjSZZUKzKqUfBQwjG5CXkk68bxx96KzIIbfc6CQffaDcCDHklc1576RWX4I7KM9KKicpa31ATjlbWZ2FqruoBR4= ARC-Message-Signature:i=1; a=rsa-sha256; d=subspace.kernel.org; s=arc-20240116; t=1786240292; c=relaxed/simple; bh=SYEU1OvMOGtTBhSgmJqVJ6fgiehyx0UOMchcpHSoZzA=; h=Date:From:To:Cc:Subject:Message-ID:References:MIME-Version: Content-Type:Content-Disposition:In-Reply-To; b=fAswJsc8X8kVehOGCNx0RpweowncPpunsMthd5VQ+mtQy+AIMVXusWy17/JsK8g7kFyNavYy0Pj2Rit3430IuJk12IccyO0hxqBaEay0etPKlGYHjI9aAzIJnvfOutjZqhPSwOsYB2iDIC92BbJXoCr7x68w6l28UY36U/IfeIk= ARC-Authentication-Results:i=1; smtp.subspace.kernel.org; dmarc=pass (p=none dis=none) header.from=mit.edu; spf=pass smtp.mailfrom=mit.edu; dkim=pass (2048-bit key) header.d=mit.edu header.i=@mit.edu header.b=kJ3ZzaIg; arc=none smtp.client-ip=18.9.28.11 Authentication-Results: smtp.subspace.kernel.org; dmarc=pass (p=none dis=none) header.from=mit.edu Authentication-Results: smtp.subspace.kernel.org; spf=pass smtp.mailfrom=mit.edu Authentication-Results: smtp.subspace.kernel.org; dkim=pass (2048-bit key) header.d=mit.edu header.i=@mit.edu header.b="kJ3ZzaIg" Received: from macsyma.thunk.org ([67.208.186.90]) (authenticated bits=0) (User authenticated as tytso@ATHENA.MIT.EDU) by outgoing.mit.edu (8.14.7/8.12.4) with ESMTP id 6791pG6S030245 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 bits=256 verify=NOT); Sat, 8 Aug 2026 21:51:17 -0400 DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=mit.edu; s=outgoing; t=1786240279; bh=WAxYNN5tgB6qi2sDeBkFSCLI2lfkJFYTctYDbOemtS8=; h=Date:From:Subject:Message-ID:MIME-Version:Content-Type; b=kJ3ZzaIgp2lguA/108EZh8NjRR8cq3zxbllXPYxTHJOt+2Q4nKIegByU477VxW8fj snQC3oSXH4j9vekebxkQUtmPF1hxsAuuXXRO+fbX3bQSZYVWeuVippCzehVqICA1P4 xPb0bJ8ptXtllaGevfzW3vZDJWkYEicS/miDLcYs1p9qJcc/RvQq1Uz9+AhEG8Gkow KSZNGeA0Luw603BpYBbg8CJvj/AaCldKk8s2wX8l4yKkQlaDDNe7y+X6IKHGTDO2sZ PUsUwwfEKfDO/yF3alXG2HjIrrYcwIDzcbYWE6GyTkifAV/0vDkg0eK9qlxXlhqH7P FtUpliFbO8+Yw== Received: by macsyma.thunk.org (Postfix, from userid 15806) id 5FA52E0880C; Sat, 8 Aug 2026 21:51:13 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 8 Aug 2026 21:51:13 -0400 From: "Theodore Tso" To: Linus Torvalds Cc: Steven Rostedt , James Bottomley , ksummit@lists.linux.dev Subject: Re: [MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] Time to call it quits for the maintainer summit? Message-ID: References: <8ae41b73983eee6ba716a61b8701df6522a02baa.camel@HansenPartnership.com> <20260806194153.6443a3ba@gandalf.local.home> Precedence: bulk X-Mailing-List: ksummit@lists.linux.dev List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: On Fri, Aug 07, 2026 at 10:27:27AM -0500, 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. I was curious about the data, so I looked at the spreadsheets for the last four Maintainers Summit (from 2022 to 2026) to see how many people had attended all four Summits... or 3, or 2, or 1. Here they are: # Summits Attended # % ------------------------ 4 9 18.37% 3 8 16.33% 2 10 20.41% 1 22 44.90% I'll be honest; these numbers surprised me. I can understand Linus's statement about how it feels like it's pretty much the constant "in-group", since I had the same feeling --- but it's much less of the same "in group clique" than what I at least had expected. Probably, some of it is that there is a certain set of biases and thinking that comes from people who are "core maintainers" -- such that even if 20% have only attended two out of the past 4 summits, and 45% have attended only 1 of the past summits, those attendees probably approached our discussions the same way as someone who has been at all of the past 4 summits. If there are things that we could change in terms of how to make it be less of an "in group", I think that would be a good thing to consider. Should we invite people who might have a very different sets of opinions --- for example, while Kent Overstreet was an in-tree maintainer, should we have invited him? And I'm only half-joking here, even though I would have found it personally uncomfortable if Kent was at one of the Summits. But perhaps we *should* be a little uncomfortable. Furthermore, one of my original goals behind starting the kernel summit is that sometimes we can work better together when we've broken bread over a shared meal together. That being given tht many of us had a chance to work with Kent at LSF/MM/BPF and (I think) Plumbers, I'm not sure it would have made that much different to what happened with the Kent situation. As another thought, when we had 100+ people attending the Kernel Summit, that we would make a *point* of inviting people who had never attended Kernel Summits before, so we would get new blood attending the Summit. After we significantly reduced the the size of the Maintainers Summit to 30, we've stopped doing this as a deliberate practice. Should we change this? For example, we could decide to include a few people who aren't currently acting as a maintainer, but are fairly prolific contirbutors / reviewers. I do *include* such people for consideration in our ballots, but they tend not to be chosen by the program committee. Should we change our criteria to explicitly include a few such folks? Cheers, - Ted