Re: [PATCH net] MAINTAINERS: update smc section

[Halil Pasic <pasic@linux.ibm.com>]

On Tue, 24 Jun 2025 16:44:06 -0700
Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org> wrote:

> > +M:	Mahanta Jambigi <mjambigi@linux.ibm.com>
> > +M:	Sidraya Jayagond <sidraya@linux.ibm.com>
> >  M:	Wenjia Zhang <wenjia@linux.ibm.com>
> > -M:	Jan Karcher <jaka@linux.ibm.com>
> > -R:	D. Wythe <alibuda@linux.alibaba.com>
> >  R:	Tony Lu <tonylu@linux.alibaba.com>
> >  R:	Wen Gu <guwen@linux.alibaba.com>
> >  L:	linux-rdma@vger.kernel.org  
> 
> Great to see the cooperation with Alibaba!
> 
> I'm not sure we can add Mahanta Jambigi, according to community
> standards. Quoting documentation:
>   
>   The following characteristics of a person selected as a maintainer
>   are clear red flags:
>   
>    - unknown to the community, never sent an email to the list before
>    - did not author any of the code
>    - (when development is contracted) works for a company which paid
>      for the development rather than the company which did the work
> 
> I think the first two bullets apply:
> 
> $ git log --grep=Jambigi
> $ 
> 
> See:
>   https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/next/maintainer/feature-and-driver-maintainers.html#corporate-structures

I fully agree, unfortunately, the first two bullets do apply to Mahanta.
I believe the SMC team within IBM (including myself) was not aware of
these community standards, and on top of that I was certainly not aware
that Mahanta has still to make his first code and review contributions
to the community. The timing turned out to be quite unfortunate; I
happen to know that Mahanta has already his first SMC patch in the pipe
and is about to fix an issue with the PNETID table. We were about to
give it a round of IBM internal review, @Mahanta: given how this turned
out maybe you can send it as an RFC right away and we can do the entire
review upstream.

Jakub, would a respin with
s/+M:	Mahanta/+R:	Mahanta/
and the necessary reordering work for you?

I'm with you, we should observe those rules, not only because they are a
community standard, but also because they make a ton of sense IMHO. So
my proposal is to make Mahanta a reviewer and revisit the topic of making
him a maintainer after none of those bullets apply to him.

Regards,
Halil