Re: sysbot AI patches and wireless

[Johannes Berg <johannes@sipsolutions.net>]

Hi Slawomir,

> > But I really cannot make that judgement call myself for every single
> > issue like that, if I could, see above, I could be doing all of this
> > myself. Need the contributors to do that. Slawomir did that after I
> > prompted (pun intended!) him to do that, and it didn't work out so well
> 
> It didn't? Or it did? :)

Sorry, indeed, it *did* - thank you.

> Well I do not have new version of the patch yet, but I'm still
> investigating correct approach and testing a lot. I see now, that I should do that in the 1st place.
> I'm sorry for that.

No worries.

This in just after our exchange here:

https://lore.kernel.org/ksummit/87y0ekm9nw.fsf@trenco.lwn.net/

It's definitely part of the job to train new contributors, and it's
actually very rewarding to see someone grow from first time contributor.
Sadly, now there's basically no "first-contact signal" that says "I care
about this more than landing this one patch". :-/ Getting a well-formed
(and well-argued) patch used to be worth something, now it's basically
not.

See also Dan's "pair programming" reply.

But I see the other side too; my first patch to the kernel, more than
two decades ago, was a similar thing, though argued first over IRC.
People need a support community to start out anywhere.

Also, I think with patches part of the issue is that there's an implicit
assumption that it'll get reviewed/merged/etc. - but as a submitter you
don't really have anyone to ask questions about that patch and process
before sending (unless you were hired into a Linux team or something).

I obviously don't have a solution to this - I'm just honestly stating
that it doesn't scale for me as the maintainer to be providing this,
certainly not in the format that syzbot's patch-as-a-service encourages,
but more generally also not. A few new folks per year is fine, a few per
month can't work.

Some people hang out on IRC (#linux-wireless, myself too), some people
build experience in other communities like OpenWRT first (or just remain
there), etc. Part of the issue is that we haven't _really_ documented
any of this as the wireless or even broader kernel community, but things
also shift frequently anyway. Another part is - not saying that's the
case for you - that some people just don't care and all they want is
land patches, so they'll go across subsystems, never learn one, and just
hope something sticks somewhere.

Meanwhile, I hope you're not too discouraged by all this, again, sorry
you got caught in the cross-fire here. (I'm going to be on vacation, we
can pick up the thread about your specific patches in September.)

johannes