Re: [Qemu-devel] An organizational suggestion

[Jamie Lokier <jamie@shareable.org>]

Ian Jackson wrote:
> Of course in a Free Software project people tend to do the work that
> they enjoy, and there's a risk that by cricising maintainers for not
> taking patches we'll just make the work of dealing with patches less
> enjoyable.

Perhaps they are simply too busy or doing other things.

>From MAINTAINERS:

x86                       Fabrice Bellard (new maintainer needed)
pc.c                      Fabrice Bellard (new maintainer needed)
Dynamic translator        Fabrice Bellard (new maintainer needed)
Main loop                 Fabrice Bellard (new maintainer needed)
IDE device                ?
PCI layer                 ?
USB layer                 ?
Block layer               ?
Graphic layer             ?
Character device layer    ?
Network device layer      ?
GDB stub                  ?
Linux user                ?
Darwin user               ?
SLIRP                     ?

To which I would add, from using it:

Documentation             ? (maintainer needed)
Built-in help             ? (maintainer needed)
Command-line / config     ? (maintainer needed)

Perhaps it's simply not enough people are paid to do this and
volunteers have other interests.  From what I've seen elsewhere, patch
tracking doesn't help much if there's nobody actively working on
integration and setting overall vision/direction.

Fabrice has indicated that there's room for a new maintainer (or
presumably more than one, if they cooperate).  It'll be interesting to
see if anyone steps forward, and if they can agree with Fabrice on
direction for the project.  If there are any companies out there
commercially dependent on QEMU and it's sister projects (KVM, Xen),
consider hiring for it.

I do suspect this project could now benefit from a more "open" style
of development - as in open to fresh ideas and more open discussion,
not just of specific patches.

-- Jamie