Re: [PATCH 16/18] MAINTAINERS - Remove L: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org from all but "THE REST"

Paul Mundt
2009-05-27T05:50:30Z

On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 10:38:38PM -0700, Joe Perches wrote:
> On Wed, 2009-05-27 at 10:33 +0900, Paul Mundt wrote:
> > On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 10:51:24PM -0600, Grant Likely wrote:
> > > Do subsystem maintainers think so? Unless they do (and tell others
> > > so), I don't think it will actually happen. Until that point, I don't
> > > think the L:linux-kernel lines should be removed.
> > >
> > Ultimately it should come to common sense. If you are only touching
> > subsystem or architecture-specific code and it's unlikely anyone on l-k
> > is going to care, or have much to add to it, then there really isn't a
> > lot of point in mindlessly Cc-ing the list on every change.
>
> And if you already know who or to what list you
> want to submit a patch to, the MAINTAINERS entry
> doesn't much matter.
>
That's not true. If I have to hack something up in some random subsystem
then I will often have to hunt for both the list address (if there is one
at all!), as well as the folks looking after that code. Yes, I could
blindly send it to a given list, but it's much more likely to fall
through than sending it directly to the people who care.

MAINTAINERS is very useful for randomly looking up people and email
addresses, especially if they aren't people you routinely interact with.
It's also much faster to look through than remembering the proper
incantation for a specific perl script ;-)

Knowing where to look and knowing who to talk to are two different
things. Most subsystem maintainers only interact with a small group of
other subsystem maintainers on any sort of regular basis, while things
like build errors in -next often send you scurrying one way or the other.