Re: What to do on MIA maintainers?

[Jakub Kicinski]

On Thu, 11 Jan 2024 17:58:01 +0700 Bagas Sanjaya wrote:
> Earlier in late last December, I sent a patch removing Karsten Keil
> <isdn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> from MAINTAINERS due to inactivity [1], but Greg was
> unsure about that [2]. So I privately tried to reach Karsten (asking for
> confirmation), but until now he is still not responding to my outreach, hence
> IMO he is MIA.
> 
> What to do on this situation? Should he be removed from MAINTAINERS?

Well. I'm not sure you should do anything about it.. In an ideal world
with properly set up maintainer structure it should be up to the next
level maintainer to decide when to do the cleanups. Random people
initiating that sort of work can backfire in too many ways. IDK what
a good analogy would be here, but you wouldn't for example come up
to an employee in a store, when you think they aren't doing anything,
and tell them to go stock shelves.

If there are patches on the list that needs reviewing and the person
is not reviewing them, or questions being asked / regressions being
reported and they go unanswered - the upper level maintainer can act.
But trust me, it's impossible for someone who is not an upper
maintainer to judge the situation.