Re: [PATCH] s390: claw network device driver

[Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>]

Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@pobox.com> wrote:
>
> Andrew Morton wrote:
> > Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@pobox.com> wrote:
> > 
> >> > Was cc'ed to linux-net last Thursday, but it looks like the messages was
> >> > too large and the vger server munched it.
> >>
> >> This also brings up a larger question... why was a completely unreviewed
> >> net driver merged?
> > 
> > 
> > Because nobody noticed that it didn't make it to the mailing list,
> > obviously.
> 
> That's ducking the question.  Let me rephrase.
> 
> Why was a complete lack of response judged to be an ACK?

That's not uncommon.  I don't ask people "are you reading the mailing list
which you should be reading" unless I think it's someone who doesn't read
the mailing lists which they should be reading.

> For new drivers, that's a -horrible- precedent.  You are quite skilled 
> at poking random hackers :)  why not poke somebody to ack a new drivers? 

In this case I didn't think about it very hard, sorry - figured it was s390
stuff and it hence falls under the "if it breaks, it's the s390 team's
problem" exemption.

>   It's not like this driver (or many of the other new drivers) 
> desperately need to get into the kernel ASAP, so desperate that a lack 
> of review was OK.

True.  But it's not as if we can't fix stuff up after it's merged up.  The
reasons for holding off on a merge would be:

a) We're not sure that the feature should be merged at all

b) Holding off on a merge is a tool we use to motivate the submitter to
   fix the code up

c) The merge breaks existing stuff.

I don't think any of those things apply here.  The only downside is the
increased bk patch volume.

That being said, if there had been review comments I would have delayed the
merge.