Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261612AbUJXXh3 (ORCPT ); Sun, 24 Oct 2004 19:37:29 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261619AbUJXXh3 (ORCPT ); Sun, 24 Oct 2004 19:37:29 -0400 Received: from ipcop.bitmover.com ([192.132.92.15]:46792 "EHLO work.bitmover.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261612AbUJXXhW (ORCPT ); Sun, 24 Oct 2004 19:37:22 -0400 Date: Sun, 24 Oct 2004 16:32:14 -0700 From: Larry McVoy To: Paolo Ciarrocchi Cc: Linus Torvalds , Jeff Garzik , Linux Kernel , Larry McVoy , akpm@osdl.org Subject: Re: BK kernel workflow Message-ID: <20041024233214.GA9772@work.bitmover.com> Mail-Followup-To: Larry McVoy , Paolo Ciarrocchi , Linus Torvalds , Jeff Garzik , Linux Kernel , Larry McVoy , akpm@osdl.org References: <20041019153126.GG18939@work.bitmover.com> <41753B99.5090003@pobox.com> <4d8e3fd304101914332979f86a@mail.gmail.com> <20041019213803.GA6994@havoc.gtf.org> <4d8e3fd3041019145469f03527@mail.gmail.com> <20041023161253.GA17537@work.bitmover.com> <4d8e3fd304102403241e5a69a5@mail.gmail.com> <20041024144448.GA575@work.bitmover.com> <4d8e3fd304102409443c01c5da@mail.gmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <4d8e3fd304102409443c01c5da@mail.gmail.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.1i Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 3583 Lines: 69 On Sun, Oct 24, 2004 at 06:44:38PM +0200, Paolo Ciarrocchi wrote: > I totally agree on the "beauty of Linux development" part of your statement, > I don't 100% agree on your definition of maintainer. I explicitly didn't define maintainer. That's the beauty of Linux development. I've been around for more than a decade in the Linux kernel and people come and people go. People show up and prove themselves and become more important because they _are_ more important. Not because they have the maintainer title. Linus sets the tone on this one, he has always played it fairly harshly in that he respects the work you did today. What you did (or did not do) yesterday isn't relevant. One way to sum it up is "There is no tenure in Linux kernel development". You are useful as long as you are useful and then you get pushed aside. I don't always agree with this model, I think it has chased away some useful people who felt like "Linus owed them" but on the other hand it is extremely open to new useful people. > There a few well defined maintainer in the community and those names > are defined and written in the kernel documentation. > So, I think that is moving target but we have a few stable and well > know references. Yeah but focussing on them is the wrong answer. Who knew who Andrew Morton was 5 years ago? He's clearly one of the most important people around today but tomorrow someone else may emerge. No offense at all intended towards Andrew, he's clearly kicking butt, I watch his trees, the amount of work he does is astounding, if you aren't watching you should be. But the cool part of the process is that Andrew came out of left field and became who he is. I've worked at places where it was all about who you knew, that sort of clubby old boy feeling, and new people had a very tough time breaking into the system. The Linus model is crushingly hard on people who have paid their dues but have slowed down, that's the "no tenure" part, but the good part is that you don't have to be anybody to be important. You just need to be good. All the rest is just talk. > I'm not a kernel hacker at all so my comments will sound just silly to > a lot of people involved in the development but as a user I'm > sometimes "alarmed" by the lack of formality in the development > process (see the naming wars), I was interviewed by a guy at Business Week a few days ago about this process and I tried to get the point across that there actually is a process but it's more of a zen thing than something that managers would like. > Larry, > thank you for your answer, I always appreciate having such a kind of > open discussions with people that are really involved in the > development. Sadly, I'm not at all involved in the development other than as someone who is trying to help indirectly. BK is clearly helping, I think even the BK license haters have finally admitted that, but I'm pretty much out of the process. I'm just like you, sitting on the sidelines admiring what is going on. As Linus said in some mail to me a while back, I'm like the guy who provides the lumber for the house raising. No matter how much I'd like to be a part of the house raising, I'm not, I'm just a vendor providing some needed parts. -- --- Larry McVoy lm at bitmover.com http://www.bitkeeper.com - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/