Slashdot Mirror
Aging Linux Kernel Community Is Looking For Younger Participants
Lemeowski writes "Time has been good to Linux and the kernel community, with the level of participation and volume of activity reaching unprecedented levels. But as core Linux kernel developers grow older, there's a very real concern about ensuring younger generations are getting involved. In this post, Open Access supporter Luis Ibanez shares some exciting stats about recent releases of the Linux kernel, but also warns that 'Maintaining the vitality of this large community does not happen spontaneously. On the contrary, it requires dedication and attention by community members on how to bring new contributors on board, and how to train them and integrate them alongside the well-established developers.'"
It is just too damn big, hard and complex. Why would I want to learn the ins and outs of such a large codebase unless somebody is paying me to?
It is not like the old days when you could pick up a "... in a nutshell" book, start hacking up a driver, then get it accepted into the kernel. I don't want a three year unpaid intership while I get up to speed and gain respect in the comunity.
I'll spend my time working on my project on either a microcontroller (AVR, PIC...) or a bare-metal build on ARM.
After watching a few videos of "Linuz"... I can assure you that he's pretty harmless, at least in person. I think he puts on the aura of raging narcissist on purpose and if you think about it, the whole persona serves him and Linux well. So far the Kernel project hasn't been fragmented and the project has been extremely stable for many years. This is not the normal course of an open source project, especially one of this visibility. This is largely due to "Linuz" and his persona.
But this is not to say I think the kernel is in good hands with him at the wheel. I worry about succession should "Linuz" become unavailable (say he's hit by a bus to use his illustration about why you should use git). I worry that the succession battle would be bad for the Kernel and the transition from the dictator rule to something else would be bumpy. Linuz could fix that by starting to transition what he does to his trusted few, and publish a clear future succession plan. But the future is "Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future."
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Well clearly you have never once 'been to' the LKML but instead built your opinion on the basis of stories-posted-on-slashdot. /.
Otherwise you would know that the LKML receives around 400 mails per day, the vast majority of which are polite, friendly and helpful.
Compare that with the number of posts offensive enough to make a story on
I *have* posted bugs on LKML, and gotten responses. I have interacted with at least two high level developers, as well as Mr. Torvalds. The one time I got a reply (Len Brown, INTEL senior systems engineer) plus asked to download software to dump the rom from hardware, followed by an analysis and a change to the kernel (which I then applied, re-compiled and tested with reports. About 200,000 people were affected by that bug (and I got email from around the world). I've also gotten several very polite replies from Alan Cox and a few others. The trick is that you have to 1) know about computers, be able to describe the bug fully, what you have tried to fix the bug, and how it affects things. 2) be able to reply to questions / do more testing 3) re-compile a kernel with a fix and see if it fixes the bug. Most people can't do #3.
Yeah. Sometimes projects can wind up in a nightmarish situation in terms of getting new contributors, because the bar to contribution is perceived to be high (even if it might not be).
I used to be a contributor to a fairly large open source project - Overall it was good, but the leads could be downright pricks. They would often trash talk potential contributors, even ones that did show potential. (Sadly, this particular area had a lot of "wannabes" out for glory too...) - While their smacktalk would keep the "wannabes" at bay, it also drove away some exceptional talent.
I was always frustrated by some of these "lone wolf" developers that weren't upstreaming, until myself and a few contributors had a massive disagreement with the project leadership regarding an attempt they made to obtain dual-license commercial rights to a contribution. We started working on founding our own project, and we've found that many of those who I originally (mistakenly) perceived as "lone wolves" and not contributing because something was wrong with them were actually not contributing because there were so many things wrong with our former project and we had been drinking the kool-aid. Quite a few of them have proven to be spectacularly talented and excellent team players.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
And that ^^ is exactly the kind of "alpha male" talk I mean.
I have no interest in proving "myself" - I just want to contribute good code. If I don't contribute good code, that's fine - reject it and tell me what's wrong with it. I'll try again. You have no good reason to shout me down unless I'm causing you immediate harm. If I'm simply wrong about something, and you have the final say, what exactly motivates the aggression?
I'm a fairly competent mathematician. I've worked with people who are smarter than I could ever dream to be. My peers are occasionally mocking when I fuck up, and I can take a friendly jibe, but no senior has ever made an insulting, showboating remark to me - not even one to one, let alone in public. This macho culture is something I've only really seen professionally in engineering (software and mechanical).
It doesn't matter in the slightest how successful Linux is. That's not an excuse for complacency. In fact, if you look at the very topic of this Slashdot post, it's the worry that there's not enough fresh blood. Arguing that the problem must be with everyone else isn't going to get you that new talent, is it?