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Linus Explains his Patch Policy
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."
It's as simple as that. I take stuff that I
feel is good. Often that feeling of goodness comes from trusting the person who sends it to me,simply by past performance. At other times, it is because I think the feature is cool, or well done, or whatever.
Works for me!!
Patches? WE don't need no stinking patches!
On Mon, 4 Nov 2002, Richard J Moore wrote:
>
> Are you sure? Isn't what Linus is saying is that he understands that some
> problems can be solved using dumps, some from the oops message and some by
> source code inspection and some by others means. But, he's not interested
> in a timely resolution;
Ok, with tons of explanation:
- I'm clearly not interested. I've not seen any discussion of the usage
of the tools or how great it is, and that's apparently because all the
LKCD people are off in their own mailing lists and do not want to have
anything to do with the rest of the world. Except when they come out of
the blue one week before feature freeze and _demand_ that I accept
their patches that I've never seen before or heard anybody talk about.
Hint: think about this part. Deeply. And then go and bother SOMEBODY
ELSE.
- Since I'm not personally convinced, it's not going into my tree.
It's as simple as that. I take stuff that I feel is good. Often that
feeling of goodness comes from trusting the person who sends it to me,
simply by past performance. At other times, it is because I think the
feature is cool, or well done, or whatever.
Hint: if you want stuff in my tree, make me trust you. Or work on
things that I feel are innately interesting. Don't bother dragging me
into your flame-wars and trying to convince me that I "must" apply your
patches.
- If it doesn't go into my tree, is that bad?
NO! Open source is all about _other_ people being able to make their
changes. It by no means means that those changes have to be accepted
back: the license basically only boils down to that I must be _able_ to
accept them back. But the really important thing, the thing that really
makes a difference, is that you, your dog, and your company can make
your OWN changes.
- If it doesn't have to happen in my tree, then whose tree _does_ it have
to happen in?
Doesn't much matter, actually. You can keep it in your tree, for all I
care. OSDL has already picked it up and apparently maintains it in
their tree. The only thing that matters is whether it gets used or not,
and whether it proves itself.
More people use vendor trees than my tree. And if you don't find a
vendor who will apply your patches, there are several "personal
vendors" out there, with the -ac, -aa and -mm trees being the obvious
ones. Many of those trees are not just used, they are also
obviously backed by people I do trust, which brings us back to the
criteria for _me_ to apply patches.
- Considering the above, if you still want it to _eventually_ make it
into my tree, what should you do?
Do you think pestering me makes me like the patches any more and trust
you? And if it doesn't, then how do you expect it to help, considering
my patch acceptance criteria?
No. The way to get it into my tree is not to whine about it. There are
a few different ways to get it into my tree:
(a) prove me wrong. And btw, it doesn't help to do so in your LKCD
mailing list. You need to get those patches out there to
_other_ people, or convince your own people that living in
your little hole just means that nobody else knows or cares
about you.
(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".
(c) Push your vendor. I have absolutely _zero_ incentives to care
about whining users (I care deeply about the non-whining
kind), but vendors do. Sometimes they do things just to get
their users off their backs.
And once it's in a vendor tree, that doesn't guarantee I pick
it up, but it _does_ guarantee that the patch is at least
widely used and thus we get more easily to (a) - proving me
wrong outside your own little world.
- 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.
Was this clear enough? Any confusion on any particular issue?
In short: convince somebody else. So far, the only thing that the
discussion has convinced me off is that people somehow seem to think that
they are ENTITLED to being merged into my tree. Tough. It ain't so. That
tree is called "Linus' tree" for a reason. The only thing you are
ENTITLED to is to have your own tree.
Linus
Thats funny, I cant seem to get MS to remove that patch from Windows...maybe we need to talk.
"I'm tired of all this 'Aren't humanity great' bullshit. We're a virus with shoes" - Bill Hicks