Subject: Re: RFD: Kernel release numbering
From: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
To: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Cc: Greg KH <greg@kroah.com>, jgarzik@pobox.com, torvalds@osdl.org,
       davem@davemloft.net,
       Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
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On Iau, 2005-03-03 at 23:17, Andrew Morton wrote:
> Ideally, the 2.6.x.y maintainer wouldn't need any particular kernel
> development skills - it's just patchmonkeying the things which maintainers
> send him.

I would disagree, and I suspect anyone else who has maintained a distro
stable kernel would likewise. It needs one or more people who know who
to ask about stuff, are careful, have a good grounding in bug spotting,
races, common mistakes and know roughly how all the kernel works.
Maintainers aren't very good at it in general and they don't see
overlaps between areas very well.

Realistically you have to do stuff like read each Linus checkin and
classify it.

Al Viro is probably the perfect 2.6.x.y maintainer but I doubt he'd want
to do it.

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