Why kernel development still uses email

It is the long-time developers that make the decisions on the tooling. That is a problem in that they are used to and have worked around all the problems they had with it, they have scripts for every step they need to do. At the same time every system they evaluate, they compare it to the smoothened out ride they have, ignoring the setup costs they had: It is unacceptable to have to set up a git commit hook they never had to set up in their old workflow, but it is perfectly fine to ask all contributors to host a Linux mail server on the side to submit patches via that since outlook is broken. Or to expect people to script their email workflows.

That usually makes for projects that are very hard to get into for new people: They need to move very far out of their comfort zone to contribute and they have a horrible experience along the way: They do not have those scripts ready that smoothen the ride that the old-timers have.

I guess the kernel gets away with this since people are actually paid to get changes in...