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

[Greg KH <greg@kroah.com>]

On Wed, May 28, 2008 at 05:35:27PM -0500, James Bottomley wrote:
> On Thu, 2008-05-29 at 01:18 +0300, David Woodhouse wrote:
> > On Wed, 2008-05-28 at 16:42 -0500, James Bottomley wrote:
> > > Appeals to be politer tend to only work in the short term (having given
> > > quite a few of them).  I think we're developing a root cause problem in
> > > the way we recruit people to work in the kernel and we have to think
> > > about fixing it there.
> > 
> > Do we really have a problem recruiting people to work in the kernel? On
> > what do you base that observation?
> 
> Yes, the median age of the MAINTAINERS is rising.  Not quite at the rate
> of a year per year which would show we have practically no turn over,
> but it is rising.

My raw numbers show that the number of individual kernel contributors
continues to increase with every release, so this might not be as much
of a problem as it's made out to be.

> However, even if there were no recruitment problem at all, getting more
> people involved is always better because it means more contributions.
> And contributions (useful ones) are the lifeblood that moves the kernel
> forwards.

I agree.

thanks,

greg k-h