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Kernel maintainers need a manifesto to work

Summary

At linux.conf.au 2017, Intel developer Daniel Vetter proposed a manifesto for kernel maintainers because maintainers are increasingly overloaded. A single maintainer does not scale, and the kernel lacks people responsible for many areas of code. Vetter drew on experience as a maintainer in the Linux graphics stack.

Ideas

  • The growth of the kernel overwhelms individuals as maintainers.
  • Clear guidelines are meant to describe what maintainers are and do.
  • The graphics community was already experimenting with new ways of working.
  • Vetter shared responsibility for the code with the team: group maintainership instead of hierarchy.

Insights

  • Bottlenecks in open source projects are often human, not technical.
  • Shared responsibility makes a project more robust against the overload of individuals.

Facts

  • Vetter presented the proposal at linux.conf.au.
  • Vetter worked on the graphics driver at Intel.

References

Critique

  • The report names the idea of a manifesto but hardly any concrete content from it.

Remarks

  • In the DRM graphics area, a group model with many committers prevailed, for example in the drm-misc branch.

Recommendations

  • In your own projects, spread commit and review rights across several people.
  • Document expectations of maintainers so that tasks remain transferable.

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