Re: [PATCH 10/10] slab: Fix MAINTAINERS entry

Lorenzo Stoakes
2025-06-09T13:59:52Z

+cc Harry, Andrew

On Fri, Jun 06, 2025 at 11:22:12PM +0100, Matthew Wilcox (Oracle) wrote:
> Add the two Documentation files to the maintainers entry.
> Simplify the match for header files now that there is only slab.h.
> Move Vlastimil to the top of the list of maintainers since he's
> the one doing the pull requests.

With absolutely no disrespect intended to Christoph or David, both of whom
are fantastically talented kernel developers whom I admire - I feel like we
need to go further here.

I raise this point as I have been heavily involved in actioning the path
decided upon by the community at LSF/MM with regard to ensuring we have
accurate entries for each part of mm.

As part of this effort, it strikes me that the slab section is simply now
inaccurate.

Informally, as discussed at LSF/MM, the broad perception is that a
maintainer MUST be actively involved, whereas a reviewer has expertise and
MAY optionally get involved in the process.

While Christoph and David have both been heavily involved in slab
development in the past, and are both clearly experts and (rightly) VERY
well regarded by the community, It seems clear to me they are not
maintaining this code, but rather act as reviewers.

So I propose we go further here and update this section to reflect this
reality.

I base this on the fact that Christoph has made 2 patches (other than
updating email) since 2020 and David hasn't contributed patches since 2016
(please forgive me if I missed anything, this was a _rough_ git log check).

Whereas Vlastimil has essentially handled _all_ slab maintainership duties
for a very long time.

According to the maintainer handbook [0]:

"That said, being a maintainer is an active role. The MAINTAINERS
file is not a list of credits (in fact a separate CREDITS file
exists), it is a list of those who will actively help with the
code. If the author does not have the time, interest or ability to
maintain the code, a different maintainer must be selected."

[0]:https://docs.kernel.org/maintainer/feature-and-driver-maintainers.html

Again, to be absolutely clear - this is not intended to be disrespectful in
the slightest but rather is a functional thing - we ought to ensure
MAINTAINERS is as accurate as we can make it.

Thanks, Lorenzo

>
> Signed-off-by: Matthew Wilcox (Oracle) <willy@infradead.org>
> ---
> MAINTAINERS | 6 ++++--
> 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/MAINTAINERS b/MAINTAINERS
> index 2f13e1602ae6..daf3bed30a20 100644
> --- a/MAINTAINERS
> +++ b/MAINTAINERS
> @@ -22787,16 +22787,18 @@ F: Documentation/devicetree/bindings/nvmem/layouts/kontron,sl28-vpd.yaml
> F: drivers/nvmem/layouts/sl28vpd.c
>
> SLAB ALLOCATOR
> +M: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
> M: Christoph Lameter <cl@gentwo.org>
> M: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
> M: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
> -M: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
> R: Roman Gushchin <roman.gushchin@linux.dev>
> R: Harry Yoo <harry.yoo@oracle.com>
> L: linux-mm@kvack.org
> S: Maintained
> T: git git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/vbabka/slab.git
> -F: include/linux/sl?b*.h
> +F: Documentation/admin-guide/mm/slab.rst
> +F: Documentation/mm/slab.rst
> +F: include/linux/slab.h
> F: mm/sl?b*
>
> SLCAN CAN NETWORK DRIVER
> --
> 2.47.2
>
>
>