Well, this sucks.
I am not sure how you both came to this impass, but it really is quite
unacceptable. I think there are several problems here:
No maintainer should cut off contribution from an entire
company to a platform it intends to help support and
implement.
Usually these kinds of impasses are a result of limited thinking
on the part of both parties. You and the contributors within
Compaq/DEC should extend an olive branch of some sort and
try to focus on technical solutions that will work for everyone,
including the maintainer.
It seems to me that if the conflict has been over architecture
for serial devices, you could simply agree to pursue different
paths for a while and see how that pans out. I know of several
places in the Linus kernel where this is being done -- the
HCDs in the new USB support and the experimental VMs.
Specifically, there are two UHCI HCDs: usb-uhci and uhci.
They were written by different people and share no code.
They should both, however, be completely compatible with
one another, since they are endeavoring to support the same
specification. This has been blessed by Randy Dunlap for the
time being. I believe there will come a time when one of the
UHCI HCDs will be dropped, but in the meantime, both provide
good exprimental feedback. Perhaps you and Russell could
agree on such a path.
The bottom line is that I think you should be looking at your
contributions with a long view and think creatively about
how to avoid conflict with Russell. On the other hand, I'm
not sure what the process is regarding the selection of
a maintainer, but it seems to me that remaining open to
contribution is a requirement for a maintainer.
Perhaps the Linux community should draft up some
guidelines for the job of maintainer that would include
some mechanism for replacing a maintainer who is not
effectively shepherding his port.
Miles
George France wrote:
> Greetings;
>
> As you probably know Russell King is the maintainer of ARM Linux. Him and I
> have been debating how serial ports should be handled on an off for months
> now. IMHO, today he lost it, declaring that he was going to block all
> e-mails from Compaq, which means he can not recieve any more ARM Linux
> patches from us. I have tried every method that I know of, to work with
> him, but he has cut off all commutations. So starting tomorrow, we will be
> submitting patches directly to the kernel mailing list, since Russell will
> not even receive our e-mails. I will also be setting up an ARM mailing list
> and web pages, for those that wish to participate. It is too bad that
> Russell has decided to create a fork in the ARM Linux tree. It is his
> choice.
>
> Attached is his e-mail for the curious.
>
> Best Regards,
>
>
> --George
>
> George France, france@crl.dec.com
> Cambridge Research Laboratory, Compaq Computer Corporation
> One Cambridgecenter MS: CRL
> Cambridge, MA 02142 USA
>
>
>
>> Since this issue raises your blood pressure to an explosive level, I will
>> not bother you again. I can handle this without you.
>
> And thus you shall. I shall not be accepting anything further from you.
> Call this what you will, but you have brought this on yourself and your
> organisation. I am NOT going to work with incompetent selfish people who
> refuse to listen to reason.
>
> Good luck, we'll benefit without your uninformed arguments.
>
> From this point on, I shall be blocking you and your companies email
> addresses.
> I don't want to hear from you ever again. You're not worth the bandwidth
> you
> waste.
>
> Appologies in advance to anyone at the old crl.dec.com domain who can listen
> to reason, I've had enough of this shit.
> _____
> |_____| ------------------------------------------------- ---+---+-
> | | Russell King linux@arm.linux.org.uk --- ---
> | | | | http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/ / / |
> | +-+-+ --- -+-
> / | THE developer of ARM Linux |+| /|\
> / | | | --- |
> +-+-+ ------------------------------------------------- /\\\ |
>
> _______________________________________________
> http://lists.arm.linux.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/linux-arm-kernel
>
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Sep 30 2000 - 21:00:21 EST