Re: [Ksummit-2013-discuss] [ATTEND] How to act on LKML

Jeff Liu
2013-07-17T09:15:50Z

On 07/17/2013 08:51 AM, Steven Rostedt wrote:

> On Wed, 2013-07-17 at 08:32 +0800, Jeff Liu wrote:
>
>> Another thing might deviated from the main theme, but I'd like to raise it
>> here because I would like to see what's the proper way for that.
>>
>> For instance, people A posted a patch set to the mailing list at first,
>> people B think that there are some issues in A's implementation, and he
>> happened to play around the same stuff recently, so he submitted another
>> patch series. Finally, people B made it.
>> (In that period, people A kept silent, maybe because he/she was unhappy)
>>
>> This is a actual occurrence I once observed from a subsystem list(my
>> apologies, I just want to talk this case rather than against somebody),
>> it seems people A is a new comer(because I can not searched any past
>> commits of him/her from the git log), people B is definitely a senior guy.
>>
>> So that's my question, is that a proper collaboration form in kernel
>> community? Does it better if people B could give some suggestions to
>> help A to improve the code, especially if those help would help A stepping
>> into the kernel development -- maybe it's depend largely on one's opinion. :(
>
> This is a completely different issue from the one in this thread, but it
> is also a legitimate issue and honestly, a bigger one than perceived
> insults.
>
> Is it proper collaboration? Absolutely not. Something that I try to be
> sensitive to as it's something I can do as well. There's been things on
> my todo list, where someone would send me patches that do it. I would be
> thinking "darn it, I wanted to do it" and even worse, the patches that
> were sent wouldn't be of the way I wanted them. But I've tried to be
> good, and instead of just going about and implementing it myself, I
> would try to help the person massage the patches into what I wanted.

It's kind of you. Generally, most forks are nice enough in helping others.
Actually, I only noticed once of something like that the year before.
Well, I just received an offline email from my college a fews hours ago as
she checked this topic and unfortunately, she has experienced the same thing
a few days ago.

> That takes a lot of effort and discipline, and honestly, helping someone
> else do the work you wanted is much harder than just doing it yourself.

Exactly, so I always appreciate the patch reviewers.

Thanks,
-Jeff

>
> Sometimes the maintainer just takes the easier route, and does the work
> themselves (because it's also more fun too). But that's really a slap in
> the face of the person that submitted the work in the first place. If
> anything hurts the community, it's this behavior. Not Linus giving
> someone an ass wipe.
>
> -- Steve
>
>