[ Whitespace in your email fixed so that it's easier to read again ;^]
On Tue, 6 Mar 2007, Uwe Bugla wrote:
>
> But please do not compare me with maintainers, especially never in this
> life with the suboptimal one from linuxtv.org being in question.
>
> a. I ain't no maintainer
Sure. The problem is that it's actually really really hard (read: almost
totally impossible) to find a person that everybody will agree is a good
maintainer. It's just a really hard job, and we all screw up.
Not just from a technical angle too - quite often, the biggest problem for
a maintainer is just the people skills. There's a fair number of people
that are good at technology but have no people skills what-so-ever, and
those are usually *worse* maintainers than people who may not be 100% up
on all the technical issues, but have no problem working with people who
do.
Finding somebody who is both technically top-notch *and* can work with
people is so rare as to be something you shouldn't even look for. That's
especially true since quite often, maintainership doesn't even come with a
lot of glory - just a lot of work, and the expectation that you always be
there.
So when you call maintainers suboptimal, please realize that:
- We're *all* suboptimal.
I personally, of course, am totally perfect, and never ever make any
mistakes (did I already mention that I'm also good-looking?) but even
despite my obviously superior features, some people have the temerity
to point out that they think I make mistakes and argue way too much.
So imagine that if people can find fault in the absolute perfection
that is Linus "almost Godlike" Torvalds, what about some poor sap who
maintains a piece of hardware with crappy documentation and a difficult
user base? And he doesn't even get the recognition that I do, so he's
just left with tons of abuse and may not be paid to do what he wants to
do, so he has to do other work *too*.
- if you want to change something, it's fine to not be entirely polite
all the time: Al Viro and Christoph "is my hair blue this week?"
Hellwig are *famous* for being blunt bastards that are negative as hell
(and hey, so am I), but they are also well-known for getting things
done and mostly being right.
And building that up takes time.
> b. As far as my virtues are concerned in comparison to his the
> comparison is completely displaced.
Well, not entirely. The thing is, we all have "mental filters". Like it or
not, people get associated with what they do, and even if they then do
something totally different in another setting, the association remains.
I'm just saying..
Linus
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
