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.
The discussion on v1 wasn't very conclusive. I am not capable of distilling many of the suggestions into meaningful changes. I believe the paragraph works in the context of the document. FWIW the paragraph has been consulted with 2 contributors to whom the described situation has happened. Reviewed-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gre...@linuxfoundation.org> Reviewed-by: Mark Brown <broo...@kernel.org> Reviewed-by: Shuah Khan <sk...@linuxfoundation.org> Signed-off-by: Jakub Kicinski <k...@kernel.org> --- Encouraged by the immediate acks from notable folks I'm submitting again, although I'm tempted to resend as part of maintainer-netdev :( Please do read the rest of the doc to understand the context: https://docs.kernel.org/next/maintainer/feature-and-driver-maintainers.html v2: - replace mailing list with "forum" to avoid excluding GH / GitLab etc - call out private >email< conversations, face-to-face conversations are obviously fine v1: https://lore.kernel.org/20240712144903.392284-1-k...@kernel.org/ CC: mche...@kernel.org CC: dan.j.willi...@intel.com CC: laurent.pinch...@ideasonboard.com CC: workfl...@vger.kernel.org CC: linux-doc@vger.kernel.org --- .../maintainer/feature-and-driver-maintainers.rst | 11 +++++++++++ 1 file changed, 11 insertions(+) diff --git a/Documentation/maintainer/feature-and-driver-maintainers.rst b/Documentation/maintainer/feature-and-driver-maintainers.rst index f04cc183e1de..fb94a9b29061 100644 --- a/Documentation/maintainer/feature-and-driver-maintainers.rst +++ b/Documentation/maintainer/feature-and-driver-maintainers.rst @@ -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 ======================== -- 2.45.2
