Re: [PATCH v2 0/2] get_maintainer: stop sending every patch to LKML

[Rafael J. Wysocki (Intel)]

On Mon, Nov 2, 2026 at 3:12 PM Konstantin Ryabitsev
<konstantin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Nov 02, 2026 at 09:32:06AM +0000, David Laight wrote:
> > > LKML has become mostly a firehose of patches that are already going to a
> > > subsystem list. The reason is THE REST: it matches every file in the
> > > tree, so get_maintainer.pl adds linux-kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx to every
> > > single patch. During the week of Oct 1-7, 2026:
> > >
> > >   - LKML carried 13,641 messages (~1,950/day), 90% of which were also
> > >     sent to at least one other list;
> > >   - with ~2,100 subscribers, that is about 29 million deliveries per
> > >     week for LKML alone.
> >
> > That sort of implies that 2100 people are happy to receive all the
> > patch emails.
>
> Doesn't really matter, since those who are at gmail.com aren't really
> receiving "all the patch emails" anyway and they are impacting everyone else.
> Gmail is simply not usable for high-volume mailing list traffic.
>
> There are other, better ways to get all patches that doesn't involve
> subscribing to SMTP deliveries.

So it occurred to me that it might be actually better to stop sending
messages directly to LKML subscribers and only make it available for
download somewhere and as a Lore archive.

Is there really anyone depending on receiving all of the LKML traffic every day?

Rafael