Re: [Ksummit-2013-discuss] [ATTEND] How to act on LKML (was: [ 00/19] 3.10.1-stable review)

Paul E. McKenney
2013-07-19T06:03:43Z

On Thu, Jul 18, 2013 at 12:01:05PM +1000, Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:
> On Wed, 2013-07-17 at 10:14 +0400, James Bottomley wrote:
> > > OK, I am stupid enough to take a stab at this...
> > >
> > > 1. Does the Linux kernel community's health depend on the occasional
> > > rant? [My guess is that we simply have no way of knowing.
> > > That said, I would be interested in hearing specific examples
> > > of open-source communities that are as doing as well as is the
> > > Linux community and that live within stricter social mores.
> > > Cue arguments about exactly what "doing well" means...]
>
> My little personal opinion (that nobody probably cares about :-) is that
> the occasional Linus rant is a good thing. It keeps people like me in
> check :-)
>
> More seriously, the rant when I screw up is generally deserved, and the
> "idea" of the possible rant (I prefer not using threat) is actually a
> strong motivator to get things right.
>
> Ie. It's a *very good* barrier against maintainers sliding into
> sloppyness. Really, it works. At least with me.
>
> It's easy to take things a bit too much for granted, especially when you
> maintain your own little corner of the world.

Agreed! Though I must confess that I have shifted from being mostly
worried about people yelling at me to being mostly worried about my own
code yelling at me. Either way, I do find that being worried about some
consequence or another does help me get a better result.

Thanx, Paul