Re: [PATCHv6 1/3] docs: media: update maintainer-entry-profile for multi-committers

[Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab+huawei@kernel.org>]

On Fri, 23 Jan 2026 14:42:30 +0100
Hans Verkuil <hverkuil+cisco@kernel.org> wrote:

> On 03/12/2025 13:27, Ricardo Ribalda wrote:
> > Hi Hans
> > 
> > Thanks for the new version
> > 
> > On Mon, 27 Oct 2025 at 14:51, Hans Verkuil <hverkuil+cisco@kernel.org> wrote:
> >>
> > 
> > I also prefer the original nomenclature for the roles:
> > 
> > Contributor: Anyone that posts a patch to the ML
> > Committer: Contributors that can commit (List provided by you)
> > Core Committer:  Laurent, Sakari, Sean and Sebastian  (Names in the
> > original presentation, should be updated)
> > Subsystem Maintainer: Mauro and Hans
> > 
> > In my head, a maintainer is someone that pushes to the upper tree,
> > rebases and merges. In the media-committer tree that is only you and
> > Mauro.
> 
> No, a maintainer is someone who decides when patches are ready for
> mainline inclusion and posts PRs. A committer is a maintainer who
> can directly push patches to the git tree and can skip the PR step.
> 
> Previous versions of this series mixed those concepts, which was very confusing.

The problem with this version is that it is also mixing/overriding
nomenclatures. Basically:

- a maintainer is anyone with his name at MAINTAINERS file;
- subsystem maintainer is also a clear concept.

We need to avoid more mess to the "maintainer" here. This was
clearer at the previous version, as "committer" and "core committer"
are clear concepts and won't conflict with existing nomenclature,
but now that we're splitting committer function as an orthogonal
attribute (nothing against that), we need better names for the
maintainers that are described on this profile. maybe:

- media core maintainer: for people responsible to maintain part of
  the media framework;
- media driver maintainer: for everyone else that is listed
  at MAINTAINERS with stuff under drivers/media and/or
  drivers/staging/media(*) and it is not a media core maintainer.

(*) Should the ones with drivers only at staging be placed on
    a different group like "staging media driver maintainer"?

Regards,
Mauro