Reducing kernel-maintainer burnout

Posted Nov 26, 2023 16:28 UTC (Sun) by johannbg (guest, #65743)
In reply to: Reducing kernel-maintainer burnout by wtarreau
Parent article: Reducing kernel-maintainer burnout

"It's important to consider the maintainer side more than the contributor's side. Patches and contributors are not missing, maintainers are."

Well you first have to become a contributor prior to becoming a maintainer, which is often the path which existing maintainers use to evaluate contributors and then later if approved offer/ack them as fellow maintainers right so my question to you is...

During your career as a kernel maintainer how many contributors have you approached and asked if they want to become a maintainer? When doing so what did you use as an incentive for that person to become a maintainer and what was the contributors response to that?

The thing is either existing maintainers aren't reaching out to prospects and offer them to become maintainers or existing contributors see no value in becoming maintainers in the first place.

If there is no value in the role of a maintainer then that role is effectively becoming obsolete ( some sort of structural change is needed ).

Reducing kernel-maintainer burnout

Posted Nov 28, 2023 16:17 UTC (Tue) by wtarreau (subscriber, #51152) [Link]

For the kernel, I remember about 4 of them over the last 25 years, with the last one being the freshest one in my memory. Each time it's being the same: may (lack of) availability was the bottleneck and I was hindering more than I was helping. For some time it's acceptable, but at one point when you're figuring the same contributor gets it right all the time and even corrects you because by lack of time you say rubish, it's time to offer them to become a co-maintainer or even the only maintainer. Last time it was clearly much welcome and helped a lot.

Accepting a co-maintainer is nice for everyone. Less stress for both, particularly for the person, knowing that you're still there for complicated stuff, and it allows that person to start to take some liberties they wouldn't otherwise have attempted to take. *this* factor is important because there is not a single way to do things, and your way might have been good in the past and no more suitable. A fresh mind can come with a different approach, and being a maintainer, feel a bit more legitimate (or at least feel like there's less risk their work gets rejected).

If I had to do it again, I would definitely do it. The most stressful for me is to know I'm on a critical path and slowing someone else down. This is negative participation and is not acceptable. Sometimes it's better to have other people with a bit less experience of certain points and more availability than just rely on experts that are never available. Then experts can say in the background and appear only when needed.