Re: A modest proposal -- We need a patch penguin

Alexei Podtelezhnikov
2002-01-29T07:40:59Z

Hi!

May I add just a pure speculation that some significant part of the problem
lays in human nature of the kernel developers? The perfectly logical path of a
patch progression and acceptance, which goes through the subsystem
maintainers, is greatly obscured by the fact that the author's name will
likely never be mentioned in the his-highness-Linus' ChangeLog. So they send
them directly or post to lkml, just hoping. So Linus is flooded with patches.
So the maintainers are fishing for the related bits in the lkml.

So I suggest dropping the names from the holy ChangeLog at all, rather than
mostly just mentioning well established authorities. Yes, this is likely
to kill probably the only reward existing in this community. There are
other ways. It would be cool if maintainers had released their trees before
the holy resync. With rewarding ChangeLogs, this will attract the mighty
community towards them. That's exactly how Alan won the love of the community.

www.kernel.org should have WHO-TO with the maintainers contacts. Gee, I
wonder who decides on the personality of the particular maintainer. The
unmaintained parts - well, Linus, unless you find who maintains it, it's
your responsibility, it's not nice to ignore patches for several months.
If you are not interested, tough but even a person who you dislike will
suffice the community. People just want to know who to bother.

A.

PS. you guessed, I have no chance to be in the ChangeLog since I only
watch debates here.