Re: [PATCH] docs: remove Assisted-by references

[Laurent Pinchart <laurent.pinchart@ideasonboard.com>]

On Tue, Oct 13, 2026 at 02:50:21PM +0200, Jori Koolstra wrote:
> > Op 13-10-2026 14:38 CEST schreef Laurent Pinchart:
> > On Tue, Oct 13, 2026 at 01:19:40PM +0200, Jori Koolstra wrote:
> > > > Op 12-10-2026 17:42 CEST schreef Lorenzo Stoakes (ARM) <ljs@kernel.org>:
> > > >  
> > > > +cc the participants from that thread FYI. The original patch is at [2].
> > > 
> > > Thanks, Lorenzo.
> > > 
> > > > On Fri, Oct 09, 2026 at 12:05:06PM +0200, Krzysztof Kozlowski wrote:
> > > > > On 09/10/2026 10:31, Sasha Levin wrote:
> > > > > > The Maintainers Summit reached consensus to deprecate the Assisted-by
> > > > > > tag. Remove the documentation requiring it.
> > > > >
> > > > > Please provide here some sort of arguments used in that summit
> > > > > consensus/discussion. This basically reverts/changes previous consensus
> > > > > [1], which is fine itself, but it lacks reasoning.
> > > > >
> > > > > [1] https://lore.kernel.org/workflows/2026070224-unholy-commode-cf45@gregkh/
> > > > 
> > > > Thanks for linking that! It is important to ack previous discussion on
> > > > this. Also LWN article is up now at [3].
> > > > 
> > > > I'm less bothered than you might think by this change.
> > > > 
> > > > The tag's useful for push back on review, but the only long-term strategy for
> > > > slop is to aggressively ignore it.
> > > > 
> > > > Linus has made that clear that that's fine.
> > > > 
> > > > What kills the project is having 1,000 slop submissions that 2 or 3 people have
> > > > to do something with.
> > > > 
> > > > The only long-term solution to that is to hit mark read 1,000 times :)
> > > 
> > > There's a way to nuke drive-by authors and that is to require them to do
> > > some kind of "proof-of-effort." So you want to contribute to the kernel?
> > > Good, come to one of the OSS conferences, or LPC, or have some well-known
> > > maintainer vouch for you, or do the kernel mentorship program. The point
> > > is not that this cannot be gamed, but that the "gaming" in itself requires
> > > some kind of investment, like proof-of-work.
> > > 
> > > We may miss the savant that for whatever reason cannot show up to a conference,
> > 
> > We'll miss all the contributors who started small and put time and
> > effort in learning. I'm pretty sure that's a majority of the people on
> > the CC list, and it certainly includes myself. Making it much more
> > difficult for true hackers to contribute to the kernel, including by
> > requiring paying for travel to conferences, is the kind of policy that
> > would make me stop contributing to the kernel.
> 
> But you were there at LPC!

It took a decade between my first kernel contribution and my first time
at LPC. And luck played a great role there, it could easily have taken
longer.

> Sorry, was planning to go to your talk, but
> couldn't :( . Would have loved to chat with you.
> 
> I doubt how many people are like this. You have to contribute A LOT of
> time to get to a meaningful level of understanding of even just one
> subsystem

And that's what people have been doing since the start of the kernel.

> , even with LLM support. I know some people don't travel, but
> I didn't suggest that conference attendance should be the only avenue
> to participate.
> 
> > > but Linux Foundation is already very supportive of funding people.
> > 
> > How many people with very little history of kernel contributions has the
> > LF funded ?
> 
> Well, me, for instance :)

I note a count of 1 out of thousands.

-- 
Regards,

Laurent Pinchart