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Linus Torvalds Got Confused About 'When and Where' Maintainer's Summit Is Going To be Held, So Organizers Moved the Entire Conference (linuxfoundation.org)
From The Linux Foundation's mailing list: Last Friday (just before Labor Day) I learned that Linus had gotten confused about when and where the Maintainer's Summit was going to be held this year. And most unfortunately, he has already scheduled a family vacation overlapping with the week of the Maintainer's Summit. Over the weekend, I've been conferring with folks from the Linux Foundation, Linus, and the Maintainer's / Kernel Summit program committee. We explored a lot of options, but ultimately there were only two choices that were workable:
1) Have the Maintainer's Summit in Vancouver, without Linus.
2) Move the Maintainer's Summit to Edinburgh, with Linus.
Curiously enough, Linus suggested option #1. And while holding the Maintainer's Summit without Linus might be an interesting experiment, ultimately, the Program Committee had a strong consensus that moving it Summit to Edinburgh was the better option.
This means that the Maintainer's Summit will take place in Edinburgh, on Monday afternoon, October 22nd. As a reminder, the Maintainer's Summit is an invite-only workshop, with ~30 people attending. The focus of the Maintainer's Summit is process and development issues, *not* technical issues. The Kernel Summit track will still be held in Vancouver alongside Plumber's. Technical discussions will take place there; we simply won't have the time, or necessarily, the right people, to have technical discussions at the Maintainer's Summit.
1) Have the Maintainer's Summit in Vancouver, without Linus.
2) Move the Maintainer's Summit to Edinburgh, with Linus.
Curiously enough, Linus suggested option #1. And while holding the Maintainer's Summit without Linus might be an interesting experiment, ultimately, the Program Committee had a strong consensus that moving it Summit to Edinburgh was the better option.
This means that the Maintainer's Summit will take place in Edinburgh, on Monday afternoon, October 22nd. As a reminder, the Maintainer's Summit is an invite-only workshop, with ~30 people attending. The focus of the Maintainer's Summit is process and development issues, *not* technical issues. The Kernel Summit track will still be held in Vancouver alongside Plumber's. Technical discussions will take place there; we simply won't have the time, or necessarily, the right people, to have technical discussions at the Maintainer's Summit.
If you scheduled an Infinity Gem convention over Thanos' personal time off, seems like you would move that convention too.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yes it is.
systemD~~ won't allow it
...but the cult of personality won't let him.
Why would someone vacation in Edinburgh in October? Isn't it rather cold there?
Meeting moved due to scheduling conflicts.
News at 11.
Why not hold it in the USA. Plenty of nice conference centers.
Move the conference for a guy who no longer knows the whole kernel in Linux?
- doddering greybeard developer accidentally gets lost, forces conference relocation.
- "goddamn nvidia!" exclaims elderly hacker as he furiously storms through canadian airport.
- "we dont break userland!!" shouts furious old man as he hurtles coffee at blue-screened airport flight departures display.
Good people go to bed earlier.
It could be Alzheimer's or even dementia.
He gave them two hints:
(1) I got my dates mixed up and I cannot attend due to prior commitments.
(2) Don't reschedule, just carry on without me.
Don't you guys get it? He may want the community to be less dependent, more able to stand on its own, not need the hand holding.
What's the message here? Leave Linus alone. He's on vacation. He basically told you so.
Linus: I'm going on vacation with family, leave me the f*** alone.
Organizers: Is this the fam?
Linus: You understand, don't you? There's no other solution. You won't go away.
Organizers: I will.
Linus: No, you won't. You're just *saying* you will! But then, after I don't kill you, you'll show up again. And you'll do something else to make everyone in my life think you are wonderful and I'm a schmuck. But I'm not a schmuck, Bob, and I'm not going to let you breeze into town and take my family away from me, just because you're crazy enough to be *fun*.
Make America grate again!
By decentralizing the summit, people could pick a location that offers teleconferencing and join the summit from wherever. Just take time off concurrently and the location really doesn't matter. You could choose to attend from anywhere that can connect. You could even effectively fork the conference if the standard meeting place doesn't suit your requirements or desires.
Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
Meetings start when I get there and are over when I leave.
If nobody watches the show, is it still on?
Some day Linus isn't going to be there to write mean things about your bad code. Where will the conference be then? Probably in Hell.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Suppose that having the core team meet face to face, relaxing over drinks together while discussing things, only results in a 1% improvement in Linux. That's a very small improvement, percentage wise.
The economic impact of all the world's servers running Linux and all the IoT and everything is more than $500 billion. 1% of that is $5 billion, so 1% improvement is worth perhaps $5 billion.
30 people are attending the meeting. If it costs $2,000/person, that's $60,000 cost for a $5 billion impact.
By the way, this is basically the same reason having the best CEO is worth so much to very large company. If having Carly Fiorina at the helm means you make $40 billion, while having Ray Morris means you make 5% more, that's $42 billion. Only a 5% difference means Morris is worth $2 billion more than Fiorina.
Roughly 8 years AL (After Linux, they'll reset the Linux epoch timer for that.)
Alzheimer and dementia get the better of us in the end. One moment you're a genius, another you're a diaper shitter. Sad. So sad.
If Muhammed won't come to the mountain, the mountain will have to come to Muhammed.
They could easily have had the conference without him. I think they just like the guy, wanted him included if possible, and really thought they may just enjoy a trip to Scotland to sample the local wares!
Absolutely nothing wrong with that. I wholeheartedly approve of the cameradierie they're showing.
"I was once on a US military ship, having breakfast in the wardroom (officers lounge) when the Operations Officer (OPS) walks in. This guy was the definition of NOT a morning person; he's still half asleep, bleary eyed... basically a zombie with a bagel. He sits down across from me to eat his bagel and is just barely conscious. My back is to the outboard side of the ship, and the morning sun is blazing in one of the portholes putting a big bright-ass circle of light right on his barely conscious face. He's squinting and chewing and basically just remembering how to be alive for today. It's painful to watch.
But then zombie-OPS stops chewing, slowly picks up the phone, and dials the bridge. In his well-known I'm-still-totally-asleep voice, he says "heeeey. It's OPS. Could you... shift our barpat... yeah, one six five. Thanks." And puts the phone down. And then he just sits there. Squinting. Waiting.
And then, ever so slowly, I realize that that big blazing spot of sun has begun to slide off the zombie's face and onto the wall behind him. After a moment it clears his face and he blinks slowly a few times and the brilliant beauty of what I've just witnessed begins to overwhelm me. By ordering the bridge to adjust the ship's back-and-forth patrol by about 15 degrees, he's changed our course just enough to reposition the sun off of his face. He's literally just redirected thousands of tons of steel and hundreds of people so that he could get the sun out of his eyes while he eats his bagel. I am in awe.
He slowly picks up his bagel and for a moment I'm terrified at the thought that his own genius may escape him, that he may never appreciate the epic brilliance of his laziness (since he's not going to wake up for another hour). But between his next bites he pauses, looks at me, and gives me the faintest, sly grin, before returning to gnaw slowly on his zombie bagel."
The OPS officer is Linus. The conference is the battleship.
It really isn't about Linus; it's about having the Chief Holy Penguin Pee Sprinkler (CHPPS) being there.
When Linus croaks his successor should preferably be at the subsequent Maintainer's Summits as well.
- Peder
What calendar software do you all use on Linux? Honest question, b/c Ive used lightning (w/ Thunderbird) and found it pretty clunky.
seems relevant somehow..
Yeah, right, Linus got "confused". Sounds more like Linus got sick of being in charge.
Seriously. The lead has an appointment clash. Whatever the reason.
Of course the crew adjusts. This is SOP in every team.
On top of that, Linus isn't just some mid-range lead in a kinda so so software team.
This is the kernel and he basically has demigod status and for good reasons too, so I presume the crew is happy to adjust.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
ntr
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Poor Linus, dementia is already setting in, but it was inevitable after letting thugs put system demon into the kernel.
Linux is dead.
And BSD will arise from the ashes of it's false demise, to conquer the OS world.
The "summit" is a small (30-person) meeting held just before a main conference it is attached to. This is common in many organizations; they will schedule board meetings and other small groups adjacent to major conferences that a lot of the group members are already coming to.
The summit was originally scheduled to be held the day before the Linux Plumber's Conference in Vancouver, mid-November.
It was moved to the Embedded Linux Conference in Edinburgh, late October.
The main conferences are established and unchanged. Just the small meeting was moved.
This is basically "hey, it turns out the chairman of the board can't make the November conference. How about we hold the board meeting at the October conference instead?"
Just sayin'.
No kernel should be so big that a person cannot know it. Either the code needs to be optimized, or cruft needs to be excised.