Re: [PATCH net-next 0/2] appletalk: move the protocol out of tree

[Finn Thain <fthain@linux-m68k.org>]

On Thu, 18 Jun 2026, Andrew Lunn wrote:

> appletalk is just one of many many drivers where the listed Maintainers 
> does not respond to patches, or there is no Maintainer at all. So a lot 
> of work falls on the top level netdev Maintainers.

It goes with the territory. If that messes up their performance reviews, I 
am okay with that. We all make our own choices.

> In fact, a lot of the AI driven bug fixes tend to fall into this 
> category of old drivers with no active Maintainers, since that tends to 
> be where the poorer quality code is.

That has not been my experience. I rarely see a review from sashiko-bot on 
the scsi mailing list that doesn't list as many pre-existing bugs as new 
bugs. This is almost always actively developed code, not mature code.

In anycase, quality is irrelevant here. I'm happy to see fixes for any 
code base whatever its level of quality and whatever the quality metric. 

What matters more to me than quality is utility.

> So top level netdev Maintainers are having to do a lot more work, on old 
> drivers which very few people care about. That is a poor use of their 
> talent, when we actually want them working on drivers for modern 
> hardware with a lot of users.
> 

Again, that has not been my experience. Linux often gets installed because 
the hardware is not modern enough so the vendor has abandoned it and so
there's no better alternative than Linux.

As for wasted talent, this industry discards skillsets just as fast as you 
discard e-waste. It goes with the territory. Moreover, if maintainers are 
not using AI to make themselves more effective then they should admit to 
retro-computing.