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> How do we encourage more devs to contribute? By allowing more accessible and higher-quality tooling than email threads. It's amazing that the development wor

> How do we encourage more devs to contribute? By allowing more accessible and higher-quality tooling than email threads. It's amazing that the development workflow has chugged on for so long, but most people (outside of finance, here be dragons) work with modern tools in their day jobs... they're not gonna take their time and try to work with the limitations of arcane processes. Unfortunately, the "old guard" is firmly entrenched and has zero interest in moving with the times. Just look at the recent Rust/Apple SoC support drama. In the end it's conflicting viewpoints and, let's be frank, a lack of money - the Linux kernel maintainers are overworked as it is, and each new piece of less-than-perfect code is likely to cause the maintainers a ton of work. More money would at least IMHO allow for getting new drivers up to speed.

jamwaffles 2y ago
Completely agree. I'd be tempted to put up some Rust code if the contribution pipeline wasn't such utter crap (yes yes it was good for it's time, but that was decades ago). But I won't be putting up any code either way until the culture moves on from little kings calling things they don't like (and that don't really affect them) "cancer". I'm not holding my breath. I've started wondering what's next after Linux because it doesn't feel sustainable long term any more. There's a small trickle of fresh blood but not enough to keep the kernel project healthy IMO.
- diggan 2y ago
  > if the contribution pipeline wasn't such utter crap I think the filter they have is working as intended, as demonstrated by this sentence. I'd agree the pipeline isn't the best, but it's not crap either, it evidently worked decades ago, and it also evidently works today, even though you seem to think it doesn't. So in this case, they'd probably prefer contributors that can see the good and bad parts of a process, instead of a knee-jerk reaction to it calling it "crap", and prefer those contributors to be more amendable to existing workflows than many seem to want to be, as they've found their workflow to work (even if they aren't perfect).
  - mschuster91 2y ago
    > I'd agree the pipeline isn't the best, but it's not crap either, it evidently worked decades ago, and it also evidently works today, even though you seem to think it doesn't. Given that the arcane state of tooling around the Linux kernel is a constant complaint in any "why do you not want to work on the Linux kernel" thread, the process evidently does not work, for it excludes many MANY MANY people from working on the Linux kernel. At the moment, the kernel development process is mostly gatekeeping to keep moderation effort at bay - anyone running any major FOSS project on Github is all too aware of that - but in the end IMHO they're throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and by the time the lack of new people becomes too evident to ignore it will be too late.

jamwaffles 2y ago

Completely agree. I'd be tempted to put up some Rust code if the contribution pipeline wasn't such utter crap (yes yes it was good for it's time, but that was decades ago). But I won't be putting up any code either way until the culture moves on from little kings calling things they don't like (and that don't really affect them) "cancer". I'm not holding my breath. I've started wondering what's next after Linux because it doesn't feel sustainable long term any more. There's a small trickle of fresh blood but not enough to keep the kernel project healthy IMO.

diggan 2y ago
> if the contribution pipeline wasn't such utter crap I think the filter they have is working as intended, as demonstrated by this sentence. I'd agree the pipeline isn't the best, but it's not crap either, it evidently worked decades ago, and it also evidently works today, even though you seem to think it doesn't. So in this case, they'd probably prefer contributors that can see the good and bad parts of a process, instead of a knee-jerk reaction to it calling it "crap", and prefer those contributors to be more amendable to existing workflows than many seem to want to be, as they've found their workflow to work (even if they aren't perfect).
- mschuster91 2y ago
  > I'd agree the pipeline isn't the best, but it's not crap either, it evidently worked decades ago, and it also evidently works today, even though you seem to think it doesn't. Given that the arcane state of tooling around the Linux kernel is a constant complaint in any "why do you not want to work on the Linux kernel" thread, the process evidently does not work, for it excludes many MANY MANY people from working on the Linux kernel. At the moment, the kernel development process is mostly gatekeeping to keep moderation effort at bay - anyone running any major FOSS project on Github is all too aware of that - but in the end IMHO they're throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and by the time the lack of new people becomes too evident to ignore it will be too late.