Re: [RFC 5/7] Docs: Expectations for bug reporters and maintainers

[Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>]

On 04/15/2013 12:33:34 PM, Sarah Sharp wrote:
> Outline how often it's polite to ping kernel maintainers about bugs,  
> and
> suggest that kernel maintainers should respond to bugs in 1 to 5
> business days.

Is there anything in here about the four-level nature of modern  
maintainership?

Patches go from the developer, to the maintainer, to one of Linus's  
lieutenants, to Linus himself. If you submit a patch to a maintainer  
they owe you a response. The lieutenant (subsystem maintainer) owes  
that maintainer a response, and Linus (the project's architect) owes  
the lieutenant a response.

Linus does not owe you, personally, a response. Neither do the  
subsystem maintainers if you approach them directly with something that  
should have gone through one of the hundreds of domain-specific  
maintainers out of the Maintainers file. So the point of going to the  
right people in sequence and getting their review and signed-off-by  
lines is to ensure you don't sit there listening to crickets chirping  
while your patch is ignored. (If you approach Linus directly you may  
randomly _get_ a response, but there's no guarantee, and usually you  
won't because he's really busy.)

Rob