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Linus Explains his Patch Policy

Posted by chrisd on from the read-it-twice dept.

An anonymous reader writes "For everyone who has been wondering the method behind Linus's seeming madness of accepting or dropping patches, he has finally given a thorough explanation. A must read for anyone who wants to get their favorite feature into the next release of the kernel."

4 of 371 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Great! by hypnotik · · Score: 5, Informative
    Evidently you missed the part where Linus said:
    (b) If you can't convince me, convince somebody else. Maybe that somebody else is somebody I trust, and that somebody else feels that I was wrong and since _he_ believes in the project he will try to convince me about it. And trust me, the people I trust don't revere me and think I'm always right. These people call me "pinhead" and tell me when I'm full of shit. If these people don't believe in your project, don't blame me and think it's because I "poisoned their minds".

    He's admitting he's as failable as the next guy - the gist of what he's saying is that popping out of the woodwork and saying "hey, check this neat feature" isn't going to get your patch accepted into his kernel tree.

    I highly doubt that any of the BSD maintainers would accept a patch either. It goes back to whether the trust is there, and evidently these guys don't hold Linus's trust.

    Not much controversial here.
    --
    (I was only an egg, but then I cracked)
  2. Re:No vendor uses stock Linux tree anyway by BrokenHalo · · Score: 5, Informative
    I've always thought of Linus' tree as more of a kernel testing ground - even for the "stable" releases

    Actually, Slackware uses the stock Linus tree - I guess on the principle that Patrick Volkerding knows that his target market knows what patches (if any) they want to apply...

  3. A bit of context by ukryule · · Score: 5, Informative

    Linus' tone might seem a bit aggressive and abrupt, but consider that this is message is a deep, deep down a very long thread that starts here.

    From the very beginning, Linus was saying he thought this patch was something that should be driven by vendors - i.e. put it in their trees *first*, and then it may find a way into Linus' tree later.

    Hence the constant references to 'this is my tree, this is how I do things'.

    The whole thread is actually quite interesting. If you're thinking of suggesting a patch, I suggest you read the whole lot to get an idea about how best to approach it.

  4. Re:how about this by killthiskid · · Score: 5, Informative

    Quoting Linux from his post:

    Never whine about a patch. I know whining works with a lot of people ("Oh, for chrissake, I'll just do it to get him off my back") but it works remarkably badly with me. Trust me on this.

    I think this says it all... don't whine... DO! If you want something in Linux, for god sakes, make a useful, meaniful contribution... don't whine about it on some out of the way, hole in the ground area...