From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1756008AbYE2NYj (ORCPT ); Thu, 29 May 2008 09:24:39 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751706AbYE2NYb (ORCPT ); Thu, 29 May 2008 09:24:31 -0400 Received: from pentafluge.infradead.org ([213.146.154.40]:45002 "EHLO pentafluge.infradead.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751271AbYE2NYb (ORCPT ); Thu, 29 May 2008 09:24:31 -0400 Subject: Re: [Ksummit-2008-discuss] Fixing the Kernel Janitors project From: Peter Zijlstra To: David Miller Cc: James.Bottomley@hansenpartnership.com, ksummit-2008-discuss@lists.linux-foundation.org, penberg@cs.helsinki.fi, dwmw2@infradead.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org In-Reply-To: <20080528.230934.131215087.davem@davemloft.net> References: <1212010931.3445.103.camel@localhost.localdomain> <1212013125.2236.58.camel@shinybook.infradead.org> <1212014127.3445.115.camel@localhost.localdomain> <20080528.230934.131215087.davem@davemloft.net> Content-Type: text/plain Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 15:24:10 +0200 Message-Id: <1212067450.12349.162.camel@twins> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.22.1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Wed, 2008-05-28 at 23:09 -0700, David Miller wrote: > From: James Bottomley > Date: Wed, 28 May 2008 17:35:27 -0500 > > > However, even if there were no recruitment problem at all, getting more > > people involved is always better because it means more contributions. > > This is not true at all. > > If people are getting involved, just for the sake of being involved, > which there is strong evidence of, then it's not a positive thing. > > We want people who are passionate about doing things with the > kernel, are self-motivated, and frankly don't need a ton of hand > holding and do not work on things that require absolutely no > thinking. I fully agree with this, you need passion and persistence - a will to make a difference. Also, the kernel is a lot more complex these days than it was like 5 years ago (not that I would know, since I'm not around that long :-), and that just means you just get a better challenge! Now getting such people is hard, I've been forever trying to get my brother to take up a FOSS project, but the drive seems to be missing. If we find a way to challenge people, to inspire them, that would be good. > Look at anyone who is extremely nimble with the kernel, and ask them > what they worked on to get going with development. Did Andrew Morton > fixup whitespace errors when he was starting to become familiar with > the tree? Did I? No, none of us did this stuff. We read over the > code and learned how it worked, did a port, optimized a lookup > algorithm somewhere. I started by rewriting the page reclaim code ;-) you need to start somewhere.