Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Tue, 1 Jan 2002 00:35:09 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Tue, 1 Jan 2002 00:35:00 -0500 Received: from femail30.sdc1.sfba.home.com ([24.254.60.20]:3501 "EHLO femail30.sdc1.sfba.home.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Tue, 1 Jan 2002 00:34:47 -0500 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII From: Rob Landley To: Daniel Phillips , Larry McVoy , Benjamin LaHaise Subject: Re: The direction linux is taking Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2001 16:33:03 -0500 X-Mailer: KMail [version 1.3.1] Cc: Oliver Xymoron , Christer Weinigel , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org In-Reply-To: <20011229190600.2556C36DE6@hog.ctrl-c.liu.se> <20011229140410.A13883@work.bitmover.com> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Message-Id: <20020101053446.HLQO11986.femail30.sdc1.sfba.home.com@there> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Monday 31 December 2001 03:45 am, Daniel Phillips wrote: > On December 29, 2001 11:04 pm, Larry McVoy wrote: > > On Sat, Dec 29, 2001 at 04:03:34PM -0500, Benjamin LaHaise wrote: > > > On Sat, Dec 29, 2001 at 11:37:49AM -0800, Larry McVoy wrote: > > > > If you have N people trying to patch the same file, you'll require N > > > > releases and some poor shlep is going to have to resubmit their patch > > > > N-1 times before it gets in. > > > > > > Wrong. Most patches are independant, and even touch different > > > functions. > > > > Really? And the data which shows this absolute statement to be true is > > where? I'm happy to believe data, but there is no data here. > > Ben's right. Most patches are independant because the work divides itself > up that way, because people talk about this stuff (on IRC) and cooperate, > and because the tree structure evolves to support the natural divisions ;) In a fan club, saying "andrea's the MM guy, talk to him" is only natural. It's a meritocracy, he's alpha geek on call in that area right now. In a fortune 500 bureaucracy, people are largely supposed to be interchangeable cogs. People's worth is measured in dollars, and somebody worth $70k a year should be swappable with somebody else worth $70k/year. (It's a bit more complex than that, there's certifications and experience, but somebody with a BA and 2 years experience working on inflatable widgets should be exchangeable with somebody else with a BA and 2 years experience working on inflatable widgets. If not, they'll "get up to speed", it's just a question of acquiring experience...) So having a single point of failure in the development process... It's unthinkable. What if that guy decides to retire? What if he gets hit by a bus. What if the competition hires him away? What if he DEMANDS MORE MONEY? (It's all about money in a corporation. It's all numbers. The bottom line. So if the whole project depends on one guy, logically he'll ask for as much salary as the project's worth. That's a lot of how management thinks.) So if you DO have someone breaking down the project into subsections, it's unlikely to be a developer, it would be a manager assigning areas of responsibility. And shuffling them around from time to time so nobody gets the idea they can't be replaced. But it's easiest just to scatter tasks over the group and keep things mixed up all the time... Fan clubs are all individuals. Bureaucracies try to eliminate the individual: the automated assembly line with no humans in it is the bureaucratic ideal... Totally different paradigm. Rob - 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/