Re: encouraging developer participation

[Nathan Hand]

On Mon, Jun 05, 2000 at 09:14:08AM -0400, S. Baker wrote:
> I have a general quesiton about encouraging participation in 
> Kernel development.  First the background:  I have been using 
> Linux for many years, and have been working on a device
> driver, that will eventually be released to the public 
> domain.  When I found a bug that I felt needed to be fixed,
> I invested the time to produce a test case that demonstrated
> the bug, created a fix, and a patch to install that fix, and
> posted it to the kernel mailing list.  

> Here is the problem: I only got two replies, both of which 
> ignored the problem and instead berated me for something
> completely irrelevant, without addressing the issue.

You can't encourage an open and free list without also allowing
for cranks. The only solution is to develop a thick skin.

> Suggestions:  If the goal is a developer friendly environment,
> something needs to change.  I don't know exactly what, but I 
> have a couple of ideas that I will throw out for debate:  I 
> think there needs to be an easy way to find a person responsible
> for any particular part of the kernel, that one can rely on for
> information about that part. 

The MAINTAINERS list is supposed to do this. It is apparently a
bit out of date. People are trying to clean it up.

> My frustration has come from not having any idea who should be
> looking at the patches I provided.  I got a couple of replies,
> but are they authoritative or not?  I have spent far more time
> so far trying to get a fix implemented than in finding that fix,
> and it has been an extremely frustrating experience.  I don't
> think that it has been one that encourages participation.

A finer grained MAINTAINERS list has been suggested, but nobody
has volunteered to do the necessary work.