[Ksummit-discuss] [TOPIC] Guidance for subsystem maintainers

[Takashi Iwai]

At Tue, 13 May 2014 16:31:49 +0200 (CEST),
Jiri Kosina wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 13 May 2014, Takashi Iwai wrote:
> 
> > While posting to different subsystem areas, I noticed various ways of
> > responses and communications.  Some picks up quick, some urges more
> > reviews, sometimes a patch gets merged silently after months later,
> > etc.  Although the variety is one strength of OSS development, it made
> > me also wonder whether we need some baseline guidance for subsystem
> > maintenance in order to give a better appeal to casual developers.
> > 
> > Is such a thing too much burden to maintainers?  Or, is it just a
> > bikeshedding?
> 
> I am afraid that any attempt to force any working style on maintainers is 
> pre-destined to fail.
> 
> As an example, there are folks who love patchwork and others wouldn't dare 
> to touch it with a 10m pole.
> 
> Even such a "core" thing as git is explicitly claimed optional by Linus.
> 
> Is there perhaps anything more concrete you had on mind?

Well, I haven't thought of any policy enforcement, either.  The way to
maintain codes (git, cvs or whatever) is a free choice, and the way
to communicate is also a free choice.  That's why I used a term
"guidance".

But something can be still helpful to be helpful.  For example, I
always spend long time just to look for how to report a bug in each
different subsystem.  Or, I become uneasy when a submitted patch don't
get any reaction for weeks (yeah, you learn to put always Andrew
Morton to Cc :) 
So, my concern is whether we built some obstacle unnecessarily in
front of our community, which might be improved by clarifying some
baseline.


Takashi