Patch submission

tmuller@agora.rdrop.com
Wed, 30 Sep 1998 11:01:58 -0700 (PDT)


Hi all,

After reading all the heated flame wars between everyone and then Linus'
response, I feel that I have to tell anyone that reads this group a couple of
things.

1) If for one instant, there are say 1k developers for the 6 million
(estimated) install base of linux, and only 10% of them send in patches, that
is over 100 patches that Linus has to look through. If this happens weekly,
then he has a 100 patches to look at. But I think this is more of a daily
thing and that looking through 100 patchs in a day is no walk in the park.
Reading 100 emails a day from this group is really to much work as it is.

2) Even though he may think differently to this, Linus is human too. He can
only do X number of things at a time before getting burnt out and then showing
his burnout (see previous Linus response to the powertrip series) on the list.
Don't egg him on. He is already under enough pressure.

3) If you think for one minute that a patch submitted is a patch in the
kernel, you are completely wrong. Don't think "Well Linus has it, I can
remove my patch and work on something else". Thinking this way is not how
this group works. If you are unable to support your work, then you are not
going to see it in any form in the kernel (see linus' email about this).

These are some of the things you should consider before blowing up on this
list. This list is for development, not flaming. If you have a gripe, mail
the person you want to gripe to. LEAVE THIS LIST OUT OF IT! There is already
enough traffic on this list as it is.

Finally, I think that patch submittal needs to go through a series of peer
revisions and that Linus should only accept patches through these peer
channels. I'm not saying how this should be implimented, only that it SHOULD
be implimented. The Linux kernel is getting big and Linus is only going to
keep getting farther behind since there is only 24 hours in a day. I think
that the effort that Linus has did in the 2.1.xxx series is great. He has
stamina and the drive to go the extra mile to get things rolling. The only
thing is that I think that this will eventually fade if Linus doesn't off load
some of the responsibility to others. I still think that he should have final
say, but other (like Alan Cox) should be in some kind of peer review loop that
allows Linus to concentrate on just those in the peer group and not each
individual developer as we are doing today. I think this would be a step in
the right direction.

Comments? Questions? Email to ME! and those NEEDING to be in the loop. NOT
THE ENTIRE LIST! Sorry for this flame to the list.

-- 
Thanks,
Troy

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