Re: [Ksummit-2008-discuss] Fixing the Kernel Janitors project

[James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@HansenPartnership.com>]

On Wed, 2008-05-28 at 22:58 -0700, David Miller wrote:
> From: James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@HansenPartnership.com>
> Date: Wed, 28 May 2008 12:20:12 -0500
> 
> > In the spirit of having a more process than technical based kernel
> > summit, I'd like to put the topic of the kernel Janitors project up for
> > discussion.
> 
> Not to distract from your points, but I think it's been a huge
> mistake to not allow folks to work hard on technical issues
> during the summit.

Actually, it was wrong of me to give that impression.  The summit is
also all about technical discussions.  However, one of the observations
made over the last few years was that it's hard to have a technical
discussion that actively involves a majority of people in the room, so
most of the technical stuff goes on either in the mini-summits (for
discussions within maintainer areas) or in the hallway (for discussions
across maintainer areas) or in BoF sessions.

However, if there's a technical topic that would occupy the attention of
more people than can conveniently be accommodated in the hallway track,
by all means raise it ... it can be added to the agenda.

> I feel like I'm at the edge of my seat dieing to talk about
> some tech topics, but it's all of this process stuff, it makes
> me want to disappear into the local cafe during the main
> summit with some folks and talk tech.

That's sort of an extension of the hallway track (especially in
Cambridge where there was a convenient pub across the road).

> I think it would even fix the attitude and process issues,
> to be able to talk face-to-face about technical issues instead
> of always hashing stuff out in email which is the source of
> all of the bad behavior.

I agree that having people face to face helps draw heat out of email
discussions, certainly.  My observation though (and it may not be
universally held) has been that the majority of the frictions on the
mailing list isn't necessarily coming from the core people who get
summit invites.

James