Messages in this thread |  | | | Date | Thu, 01 Oct 1998 21:53:35 +0800 | | From | Anthony Heading <> | | Subject | More fuel to the fire [was Re: Linus is on a powertrip..] |
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Apologies for breaking the threading - adding the necessary headers manually into Netscape mailer is defeating me.
esr wrote: > I think it would help matters all around if there were a web page somewhere > listing pending patches and even as little as a one-line comment from you > as to where they are in the integration process. It might even help you > organize your own work better.
It's interesting that many people - including Eric - seem to have an implicit belief that Internet technology, in one form or another, holds the solution to the problem at hand. Web pending patch lists, jitterbug, development CVS trees, hierarchical distributed weighted voting patch scoring systems, whatever. And perhaps they do, but all blind assumptions are worth questioning.
I hope it's not too controversial to hypothesize that Linus is under heavy pressure, and that evidence of this is starting to show. One symptom is lack of responsiveness to patches, which some people are complaining about violently. But Linus's comments indicate that this is because now he has to think long and hard about every change.
He presumably then needs to reject a lot more changes. The Right Thing is a lot less obvious than it was a couple of years ago, and is perhaps increasingly a matter of fine judgement. And so he wants to implement something in his own way in his own timeframe instead, living with the howls of protest and the resultant stress.
Does it really help, then, to propose an automated system which counts and stores these individual sins, which measures his performance against a public list, which consolidates technical opposition, and which streamlines patch delivery to guarantee that he is saturated with potential input at all times?
The solution is surely more humanity, not less.
This could mean a number of things in concrete, of course, including the naive hope that people might just be more understanding.
Perhaps of more likely benefit though: RedHat might use some of their new-found capital and offer to fund Linus a dedicated secretary/adminstrator/PA. Someone who could sort through incoming patches, check that they diff cleanly, bounce them if they're badly documented or too large, keep a track of what's being tried in vger or anywhere else where credible hackers gather, inform patch authors of what's happened to their progeny, and also delete any incoming emails that are plain rude before Linus need see them.
It seems to work for Don Knuth, so far as I can tell, and might reduce the pressure all round.
Just the traditional 2c,
Anthony
<!-- MHonArc v2.1.0 --> <!--X-Subject: Re: Linus is on a powertrip.. --> <!--X-From: "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@thyrsus.com> --> <!--X-Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 00:46:27 -0400 --> <!--X-Message-Id: 19980930004627.A21531@thyrsus.com --> <!--X-ContentType: text/plain --> <!--X-Reference-Id: 19980929180903.C528@msu.edu --> <!--X-Reference-Id: Pine.LNX.3.96.980929210743.22450J-100000@penguin.transmeta.com --> <!--X-Head-End--> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML//EN"> <HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>Re: Linus is on a powertrip..</TITLE> <LINK REV="made" HREF="mailto:esr@thyrsus.com"> </HEAD> <BODY> <!--X-Body-Begin--> <!--X-User-Header--> <!--X-User-Header-End--> <!--X-TopPNI--> <HR> [<A HREF="msg00199.html">Thread Prev</A>][<A HREF="msg00274.html">Thread Next</A>][<A HREF="index.html#00208">Thread Index</A>] <!--X-TopPNI-End--> <!--X-MsgBody--> <!--X-Subject-Header-Begin--> <H1>Re: Linus is on a powertrip..</H1> <HR> <!--X-Subject-Header-End--> <UL> <LI>To: Linus Torvalds <<A HREF="mailto:torvalds@transmeta.com">torvalds@transmeta.com</A>>, Aaron Tiensivu <<A HREF="mailto:tiensivu@pilot.msu.edu">tiensivu@pilot.msu.edu</A>></LI> <LI><strong>Subject</strong>: <strong>Re: Linus is on a powertrip..</strong></LI> <LI><strong>From</strong>: <strong>"Eric S. Raymond" <<A HREF="mailto:esr@thyrsus.com">esr@thyrsus.com</A>></strong></LI> <LI>Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 00:46:27 -0400</LI> <LI>Cc: Linux Kernel Digest <<A HREF="mailto:linux-kernel@vger.rutgers.edu">linux-kernel@vger.rutgers.edu</A>></LI> <LI>In-Reply-To: <<A HREF="msg00199.html">Pine.LNX.3.96.980929210743.22450J-100000@penguin.transmeta.com</A>>; from Linus Torvalds on Tue, Sep 29, 1998 at 09:10:00PM -0700</LI> <LI>Organization: Eric Conspiracy Secret Labs</LI> <LI>References: <<A HREF="msg00162.html">19980929180903.C528@msu.edu</A>> <<A HREF="msg00199.html">Pine.LNX.3.96.980929210743.22450J-100000@penguin.transmeta.com</A>></LI> <LI>Sender: <A HREF="mailto:owner-linux-kernel@vger.rutgers.edu">owner-linux-kernel@vger.rutgers.edu</A></LI> </UL> <!--X-Head-Body-Sep-Begin--> <HR> <!--X-Head-Body-Sep-End--> <!--X-Body-of-Message--> <PRE> Linus Torvalds <torvalds@transmeta.com>: > It's not about a powertrip. It's about the fact that Linux is getting > larger, and that forces me to require more of people sending me patches. > Long gone are the times when you could just send me a patch and I could > apply it without thinking about it. I think most people recognize this, understand the increasing pressure, and sympathize with your position. On the other hand, all these stories about repeated patch resubmissions being necessary sound all too plausible in the absence of any official, publicly visible patch queue with your annotations on it.
I think it would help matters all around if there were a web page somewhere listing pending patches and even as little as a one-line comment from you as to where they are in the integration process. It might even help you organize your own work better. -- <a href="<A HREF="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr">http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr</A>">Eric S. Raymond</a>
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</PRE>
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