From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S966570Ab3DQO5h (ORCPT ); Wed, 17 Apr 2013 10:57:37 -0400 Received: from mail-ia0-f181.google.com ([209.85.210.181]:53352 "EHLO mail-ia0-f181.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S966849Ab3DQO5Z convert rfc822-to-8bit (ORCPT ); Wed, 17 Apr 2013 10:57:25 -0400 Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2013 21:15:06 -0500 From: Rob Landley Subject: Re: [RFC 5/7] Docs: Expectations for bug reporters and maintainers To: Sarah Sharp Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-doc@vger.kernel.org, Linus Torvalds In-Reply-To: <412f8f434c32c557b8c17e73163d003b895e2e56.1366046390.git.sarah.a.sharp@linux.intel.com> (from sarah.a.sharp@linux.intel.com on Mon Apr 15 12:33:34 2013) X-Mailer: Balsa 2.4.11 Message-Id: <1366164906.18069.110@driftwood> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; DelSp=Yes; Format=Flowed Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8BIT Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org 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