[U-Boot] ATMEL Custodians == /dev/null ??

[Haavard Skinnemoen]

Wolfgang Denk <wd at denx.de> wrote:
> Dear Haavard Skinnemoen,
> 
> In message <20100809181318.5ec2ab8c at hskinnemoen-d830> you wrote:
> >
> > > First, I have poked them a number of times, both on and off list.
> > 
> > I haven't received any such pokes from you in a long time.
> 
> I'm not talking about you here. You have clearly indicated that you
> resign as custodian, which I have accepted.  So why should I poke you?

I didn't resign _that_ long ago.

> > I used to be subscribed to a whole bunch of lists, but after hitting
> > around 70,000 unread e-mail, I decided to unsubscribe from most of
> > them, including u-boot and LKML.
> > 
> > Of course, this is also the main reason why I wanted to resign as a
> > custodian; I felt I hadn't been able to do a proper job for some time.
> > But this makes it especially odd that I wasn't Cc'd on the discussion
> > about custodianship.
> 
> A custodian who is not subscried on the mailing list?  How is this
> supposed to work?  I have to admit that I never expected somebody
> would come up with such a concept.

It actually works on Linux, where people know that they need to Cc the
maintainer to get his attention. So you can actually maintain a dozen
drivers across half a dozen subsystems without getting completely
bogged down with e-mail. If you just drop a patch into the LKML
firehose, it will most likely be ignored unless akpm picks it up and
pokes the relevant maintainer.

> > > Third, there have been patches posted that clearly fall in their
> > > domain, and there is zero response: no comment, no activity in the
> > > custodian directory, no pull request, nothing.
> > 
> > If I wasn't Cc'd, that would explain it. Of course, it's always best if
> 
> It has never been a requirement to Cc: the custodian. It is up to the
> custodian to pick up the work that falls into hiw bailiwick,
> including for example global changes that happen to affect his
> architecture / subsystem. Of course this requires that you are
> subscribed. And that you actually *read* the list, at leats to the
> extend that you recognize certain buzzwords in the Subject: lines,
> like the name of the architure you feel responsible for.

In other words, being a u-boot custodian takes a lot more work than
being a Linux maintainer. Combine this with what I said before about it
being difficult to justify spending a lot of time keeping the
bootloader limping along, and it's not good news if you want more
vendor involvement.

> > maintainers follow all relevant mailing lists, but sometimes it's just
> > not an option, not if you're working on several other projects besides
> > u-boot.
> 
> Your idea of working as a maintainer is very much different from mine,
> and from the actual requirements for the job.

That seems to be the case, yes.

Haavard