3 ms·

> The four line patch isn't a ton of work once you've done the RCA and besides it required work by the maintainer to get it to pass the debugging is the work

by cp9 3y ago

> The four line patch isn't a ton of work once you've done the RCA and besides it required work by the maintainer to get it to pass the debugging *is* the work! the work for which he went uncredited, that's the crux of the whole thing. he got a Reported-By which just means he ran into a bug and told someone about it, not that he root caused it, wrote a patch and bothered to submit it.

jacquesm 3y ago
Reported-by is the normal response for this kind of patch, 1000's of examples in the kernel mailing lists. This whole thing tastes to me like a pay-off for an unwanted gift, you don't go into this sort of an exchange on a security mailing list expecting kernel contributor credit for fixing a bug. That's just not how it works. Maybe it should work like that but it simply doesn't. OP had pre-set expectations and those were found to be in the wrong, nobody got 'robbed' and misrepresenting the exchange to one that makes the kernel maintainer seem like an asshole when that wasn't at all how it went down makes me feel even less good about the whole thing. Reported-by ranges the gamut of 'I ran into this bug' to 'I found this issue and here is my patch, which I hope is useful to you'. If you want to negotiate credit rules for 4 line patches up front you are of course welcome to do so but keep in mind that maintainers can and do accept patches, rewrite them and contribute them under their own name (and their responsibility), especially security patches.
- JodieBenitez 3y ago
  I don't think the number of lines is relevant. A patch is a patch and the author should be credited as such. > Maybe it should work like that Definitely
  - ylyn 3y ago
    > A patch is a patch and the author should be credited as such. But the patch was not taken. The maintainer fixed it a different way. So credit is given for reporting the issue and suggesting a fix, and that is what is represented by the Reported-By. Is that so hard to understand?
    - alexsmarsh 3y ago
      its the suggesting a fix (ie doing the research) thats missed, anybody can point out a bug
ylyn 3y ago
No, that's not what "Reported-By" means. The kernel community has different conventions. This entire HN comment section is ridiculous with everyone acting as if the author wrote an entire subsystem and someone else took attribution. The author here figured out a bug and suggested a fix. It happens that they conmunicated their fix in the form of a patch, but that happens very regularly in kernel land. In the end the author got a Reported-By, which is entirely appropriate for what happened. If the maintainer accepted the author's patch as-is or with minimal modification then yes, they should get Author attribution. But the patch that was taken was substantially different.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  What is interesting about this whole thread is that apparently a whole raft of people are ready to string up the kernel maintainers for doing what they've been doing for years rather than to stop to question whether the first time contributor may have a communications issue or a different set of expectations than that which is the norm for a project that has been going for a couple of decades. Weirder still because all of this has been done in the open for all of that time, it's not as if how the Linux kernel is maintained is a secret.
  - JodieBenitez 3y ago
    Questioning the consensus is how things evolve and hopefully progress.

> The four line patch isn't a ton of work once you've done the RCA and besides it required work by the maintainer to get it to pass the debugging *is* the work

by cp9 3y ago

jacquesm 3y ago

Reported-by is the normal response for this kind of patch, 1000's of examples in the kernel mailing lists. This whole thing tastes to me like a pay-off for an unwanted gift, you don't go into this sort of an exchange on a security mailing list expecting kernel contributor credit for fixing a bug. That's just not how it works. Maybe it should work like that but it simply doesn't. OP had pre-set expectations and those were found to be in the wrong, nobody got 'robbed' and misrepresenting the exchange to one that makes the kernel maintainer seem like an asshole when that wasn't at all how it went down makes me feel even less good about the whole thing. Reported-by ranges the gamut of 'I ran into this bug' to 'I found this issue and here is my patch, which I hope is useful to you'. If you want to negotiate credit rules for 4 line patches up front you are of course welcome to do so but keep in mind that maintainers can and do accept patches, rewrite them and contribute them under their own name (and their responsibility), especially security patches.

JodieBenitez 3y ago
I don't think the number of lines is relevant. A patch is a patch and the author should be credited as such. > Maybe it should work like that Definitely
- ylyn 3y ago
  > A patch is a patch and the author should be credited as such. But the patch was not taken. The maintainer fixed it a different way. So credit is given for reporting the issue and suggesting a fix, and that is what is represented by the Reported-By. Is that so hard to understand?
  - alexsmarsh 3y ago
    its the suggesting a fix (ie doing the research) thats missed, anybody can point out a bug

ylyn 3y ago

No, that's not what "Reported-By" means. The kernel community has different conventions. This entire HN comment section is ridiculous with everyone acting as if the author wrote an entire subsystem and someone else took attribution. The author here figured out a bug and suggested a fix. It happens that they conmunicated their fix in the form of a patch, but that happens very regularly in kernel land. In the end the author got a Reported-By, which is entirely appropriate for what happened. If the maintainer accepted the author's patch as-is or with minimal modification then yes, they should get Author attribution. But the patch that was taken was substantially different.

jacquesm 3y ago
What is interesting about this whole thread is that apparently a whole raft of people are ready to string up the kernel maintainers for doing what they've been doing for years rather than to stop to question whether the first time contributor may have a communications issue or a different set of expectations than that which is the norm for a project that has been going for a couple of decades. Weirder still because all of this has been done in the open for all of that time, it's not as if how the Linux kernel is maintained is a secret.
- JodieBenitez 3y ago
  Questioning the consensus is how things evolve and hopefully progress.