docs: maintainer: discourage taking conversations off-list

Multiple vendors seem to prefer taking discussions off list, and
ask contributors to work with them privately rather than just send
patches to the list. I'd imagine this is because it's hard to fit in
time for random developers popping up with features to review into
packed schedule. From what I've seen "work in private" usually means
someone on the company side will be assigned to handle the interaction,
possibly months later. In worst case, the person scheduled to help
the contributor takes over and writes the code themselves.
This is not how the community is supposed to work.

Reviewed-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Reviewed-by: Mark Brown <broonie@kernel.org>
Reviewed-by: Shuah Khan <skhan@linuxfoundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20240713235020.820910-1-kuba@kernel.org
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20240712144903.392284-1-kuba@kernel.org
This commit is contained in:
Jakub Kicinski 2024-07-13 16:50:20 -07:00 committed by Jonathan Corbet
parent bd5b61d8b1
commit e35fa1f236

View File

@ -83,6 +83,17 @@ bugs as well, if the report is of reasonable quality or indicates a
problem that might be severe -- especially if they have *Supported*
status of the codebase in the MAINTAINERS file.
Open development
----------------
Discussions about user reported issues, and development of new code
should be conducted in a manner typical for the larger subsystem.
It is common for development within a single company to be conducted
behind closed doors. However, development and discussions initiated
by community members must not be redirected from public to closed forums
or to private email conversations. Reasonable exceptions to this guidance
include discussions about security related issues.
Selecting the maintainer
========================