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LKML: Serge Semin: linux: Goodbye from a Linux community volunteer
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As you may have noticed the change concerned some of the<br />Ru-related developers removal from the list of the official kernel maintainers,<br />including me.<br /><br />The community members rightly noted that the _quite_ short commit log contained<br />very vague terms with no explicit change justification. No matter how hard I<br />tried to get more details about the reason, alas the senior maintainer I was<br />discussing the matter with haven't given an explanation to what compliance<br />requirements that was. I won't cite the exact emails text since it was a private<br />messaging, but the key words are "sanctions", "sorry", "nothing I can do", "talk<br />to your (company) lawyer"... I can't say for all the guys affected by the<br />change, but my work for the community has been purely _volunteer_ for more than<br />a year now (and less than half of it had been payable before that). For that<br />reason I have no any (company) lawyer to talk to, and honestly after the way the<br />patch has been merged in I don't really want to now. Silently, behind everyone's<br />back, _bypassing_ the standard patch-review process, with no affected<br />developers/subsystem notified - it's indeed the worse way to do what has been<br />done. No gratitude, no credits to the developers for all these years of the<br />devoted work for the community. No matter the reason of the situation but<br />haven't we deserved more than that? Adding to the GREDITS file at least, no?..<br /><br />I can't believe the kernel senior maintainers didn't consider that the patch<br />wouldn't go unnoticed, and the situation might get out of control with<br />unpredictable results for the community, if not straight away then in the middle<br />or long term perspective. I am sure there have been plenty ways to solve the<br />problem less harmfully, but they decided to take the easiest path. Alas what's<br />done is done. A bifurcation point slightly initiated a year ago has just been<br />fully implemented. The reason of the situation is obviously in the political<br />ground which in this case surely shatters a basement the community has been built<br />on in the first place. If so then God knows what might be next (who else might<br />be sanctioned...), but the implemented move clearly sends a bad signal to the<br />Linux community new comers, to the already working volunteers and hobbyists like<br />me.<br /><br />Thus even if it was still possible for me to send patches or perform some<br />reviews, after what has been done my motivation to do that as a volunteer has<br />simply vanished. (I might be doing a commercial upstreaming in future though).<br />But before saying goodbye I'd like to express my gratitude to all the community<br />members I have been lucky to work with during all these years. Specifically:<br /><br />NTB-folks, Jon, Dave, Allen. NTB was my starting point in the kernel upstream<br />work. Thanks for the initial advices and despite of very-very-very tough reviews<br />with several complete patchset refactorings, I learned a lot back then. That<br />experience helped me afterwards. Thanks a lot for that. BTW since then I've got<br />several thank-you letters for the IDT NTB and IDT EEPROM drivers. If not for you<br />it wouldn't have been possible.<br /><br />Andy, it's hard to remember who else would have given me more on my Linux kernel<br />journey as you have. We first met in the I2C subsystem review of my DW I2C<br />driver patches. Afterwards we've got to be frequently meeting here and there -<br />GPIO, SPI, TTY, DMA, NET, etc, clean/fixes/features patch(set)s. Quite heat<br />discussions in your first reviews drove me crazy really. But all the time we<br />managed to come up with some consensus somehow. And you never quit the<br />discussions calmly explaining your point over and over. You never refused to<br />provide more detailed justification to your requests/comments even though you<br />didn't have to. Thanks to that I learned how to be patient to reviewers<br />and reviewees. And of course thank you for the Linux-kernel knowledges and all<br />the tips and tricks you shared.<br /><br />* Andy, please note due to the situation I am not going to work on my DW DMAC<br />fixes patchset anymore. So if you ever wish to have DW UART stably working with the<br />DW DMA-engine driver, then feel free to pick the series up:<br />Link: <a href="https://lore.kernel.org/dmaengine/20240911184710.4207-1-fancer.lancer@gmail.com/">https://lore.kernel.org/dmaengine/20240911184710.4207-1-fancer.lancer@gmail.com/</a><br /><br />Linus (Walleij), after you merged one of my pretty much heavy patchset in you<br />suggested to me to continue the DW APB GPIO driver maintaining. It was a first<br />time I was asked to maintain a not-my driver. Thank you for the trust. I'll<br />never forget that.<br /><br />Mark, thank you very much for entrusting the DW APB SSI driver maintenance to<br />me. I've put a lot of efforts into making it more generic and less errors-prune,<br />especially when it comes working under a DMA-engine control or working in the<br />mem-ops mode. I am sure the results have been beneficial to a lot of DW<br />SPI-controller users since then.<br /><br />Damien, our first and last meeting was at my generic AHCI-platform and DW AHCI<br />SATA driver patches review. You didn't make it a quick and easy path. But still<br />all the reviews comments were purely on the technical basis, and the patches<br />were eventually merged in. Thank you for your time and experience I've got from<br />the reviews.<br /><br />Paul, Thomas, Arnd, Jiaxun, we met several times in the mailing list during my<br />MIPS P5600 patches and just generic MIPS patches review. It was always a<br />pleasure to discuss the matters with such brilliant experts in the field. Alas<br />I've spent too much time working on the patches for another subsystems and<br />failed to submit all the MIPS-related bits. Sorry I didn't keep my promise, but<br />as you can see the circumstances have suddenly drawn its own deadline.<br /><br />Bjorn, Mani, we were working quite a lot with you in the framework of the DW<br />PCIe RC drivers. You reviewed my patches. I helped you to review another patches<br />for some time. Despite of some arguing it was always a pleasure to work with<br />you. Mani, special thanks for the cooperative DW eDMA driver maintenance. I<br />think we were doing a great work together.<br /><br />Paolo, Jakub, David, Andrew, Vladimir, Russell. The network subsystem and<br />particularly the STMMAC driver (no doubt the driver sucks) have turned to be a<br />kind of obstacle on which my current Linux-kernel activity has stopped. I really<br />hope that at least in some way my help with the incoming STMMAC and DW XPCS<br />patches reviews lightened up your maintainance duty. I know Russell might<br />disagree, but I honestly think that all our discussions were useful after all,<br />at least for me. I also think we did a great work working together with Russell<br />on the DW GMAC/QoS ETH PCS patches. Hopefully you'll find a time to finish it up<br />after all. <br /><br />Rob, Krzysztof, from your reviews I've learned a lot about the most hardwary part<br />of the kernel - DT sources and DT-bindings. All your comments have been laconic<br />and straight to the point. That made reviews quick and easy. Thank you very<br />much for that.<br /><br />Guenter, special thanks for reviewing and accepting my patches to the hwmon and<br />watchdog subsystems. It was pleasure to be working with you.<br /><br />Borislav, we disagreed and argued a lot. So my DW uMCTL2 DDRC EDAC patches even<br />got stuck in limbo for quite a long time. Anyway thank you for the time<br />you spent reviewing my patches and trying to explain your point.<br /><br />* Borislav, it looks like I won't be able to work on my Synopsys EDAC patchsets<br />anymore. If you or somebody else could pick them up and finish up the work it<br />would be great (you can find it in the lore archive). The patches convert the<br />mainly Zynq(MP)-specific Synopsys EDAC driver to supporting the generic DW<br />uMCTL2 DDRC. It would be very beneficial for each platform based on that<br />controller.<br /><br />Greg, we met several times in the mailing lists. You reviewed my patches sent<br />for the USB and TTY subsystems, and all the time the process was straight,<br />highly professional, and simpler than in the most of my other case.<br />Thank you very much for that.<br /><br />Yoshihiro, Keguang, Yanteng, Kory, Cai and everybody I was lucky to meet in the<br />kernel mailing lists, but forgot to mention here. Thank you for the time spent<br />for our cooperative work on making the Linux kernel better. It was a pleasure to<br />meet you here.<br /><br />I also wish to say huge thanks to the community members trying to<br />defend the kicked off maintainers and for support you expressed in<br />these days. It means a lot.<br /><br />A little bit statics of my kernel-work at the end:<br /><br />Signed-off patches: 518<br />Reviewed and Acked patches: 253<br />Tested patches: 80<br /><br />You might say not the greatest achievement for seven years comparing to some<br />other developers. Perhaps. But I meant each of these tags, be sure.<br /><br />I guess that's it. If you ever need some info or consultation regarding the<br />drivers I used to maintain or the respective hardware or the Synopsys IP-cores<br />(about which I've got quite comprehensive knowledge by this time), feel free to<br />reach me out via this email. I am always willing to help to the community<br />members.<br /><br />Hope we'll meet someday in more pleasant circumstances and drink a<br />couple or more beers together. But now it's time to say good bye.<br />Sorry for a long-read text. I wish good luck on your Linux-way.<br /><br />Best Regards,<br />-Serge(y)<br /><br /></pre></td><td width="32" rowspan="2" class="c" valign="top"><img src="/images/icornerr.gif" width="32" height="32" alt="\" /></td></tr><tr><td align="right" valign="bottom"> 聽 </td></tr><tr><td align="right" valign="bottom">聽</td><td class="c" valign="bottom" style="padding-bottom: 0px"><img src="/images/bcornerl.gif" width="32" height="32" alt="\" /></td><td class="c">聽</td><td class="c" valign="bottom" style="padding-bottom: 0px"><img src="/images/bcornerr.gif" width="32" height="32" alt="/" /></td></tr><tr><td align="right" valign="top" colspan="2"> 聽 </td><td class="lm">Last update: 2024-10-24 06:28 聽聽 [from the cache]<br />漏2003-2020 <a href="http://blog.jasper.es/"><span itemprop="editor">Jasper Spaans</span></a>|hosted at <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/?refcode=9a8e99d24cf9">Digital Ocean</a> and my Meterkast|<a href="http://blog.jasper.es/categories.html#lkml-ref">Read the blog</a></td><td>聽</td></tr></table><script language="javascript" src="/js/styleswitcher.js" type="text/javascript"></script></body></html>