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Trying to Explain the 'Incomprehensible' Decision Making Process of a Subsystem Maintainer

78 views · Published 4 April 2017 · 46:36 · Indexed 21 October 2026

Channel: The Linux Foundation · 2017 · Science & Technology

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Trying to Explain the 'Incomprehensible' Decision Making Process of a Subsystem Maintainer - Wolfram Sang, Renesas

To the outside world, decisions of Kernel maintainers may be hard to grasp sometimes. Why is this patch reviewed first? Why don't I get an answer to my questions? How can this take so long? Trying to bring some transparency to these questions, I'll demonstrate on what factors my reasoning is based on for the I2C subsystem. I'll show in what ways the views of a developer and of a maintainer differ (I am a developer, too). And what really helps if you want to get your patches upstream more easily.

About Wolfram Sang

Wolfram Sang has been working as a Linux kernel developer for embedded systems since 2008. He maintains the I2C subsystem and works as a consultant, mainly for the Renesas Upstream Kernel Team. Programming since his childhood, he still hacks his machines from the 80s, especially the C64. When not using computers, he is interested in ecological topics, likes cooking and tries to keep his Japanese alive. He has spoken at various conferences like ELCE, ELC, LinuxCon, LinuxTag, and FOSDEM multiple times about kernel topics.

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