Re: linux: Goodbye from a Linux community volunteer

On Thu, 2024-10-24 at 07:27 +0300, Serge Semin wrote:

Hello Linux-kernel community,

I am sure you have already heard the news caused by the recent Greg'
commit
6e90b675cf942e ("MAINTAINERS: Remove some entries due to various
compliance
requirements."). As you may have noticed the change concerned some of
the
Ru-related developers removal from the list of the official kernel
maintainers,
including me.

The community members rightly noted that the _quite_ short commit log
contained
very vague terms with no explicit change justification. No matter how
hard I
tried to get more details about the reason, alas the senior
maintainer I was
discussing the matter with haven't given an explanation to what
compliance
requirements that was. I won't cite the exact emails text since it
was a private
messaging, but the key words are "sanctions", "sorry", "nothing I can
do", "talk
to your (company) lawyer"... I can't say for all the guys affected by
the
change, but my work for the community has been purely _volunteer_ for
more than
a year now (and less than half of it had been payable before that).
For that
reason I have no any (company) lawyer to talk to, and honestly after
the way the
patch has been merged in I don't really want to now. Silently, behind
everyone's
back, _bypassing_ the standard patch-review process, with no affected
developers/subsystem notified - it's indeed the worse way to do what
has been
done. No gratitude, no credits to the developers for all these years
of the
devoted work for the community. No matter the reason of the situation
but
haven't we deserved more than that? Adding to the GREDITS file at
least, no?..

I can't believe the kernel senior maintainers didn't consider that
the patch
wouldn't go unnoticed, and the situation might get out of control
with
unpredictable results for the community, if not straight away then in
the middle
or long term perspective. I am sure there have been plenty ways to
solve the
problem less harmfully, but they decided to take the easiest path.
Alas what's
done is done. A bifurcation point slightly initiated a year ago has
just been
fully implemented. The reason of the situation is obviously in the
political
ground which in this case surely shatters a basement the community
has been built
on in the first place. If so then God knows what might be next (who
else might
be sanctioned...), but the implemented move clearly sends a bad
signal to the
Linux community new comers, to the already working volunteers and
hobbyists like
me.

I'm also quite shocked and even baffled about how this has been
handled. This is not how leaders should communicate difficult or big
decisions. It's the most disappointing event I have witnessed in the
project.

There is the form and there is the content – about the content one
cannot do much, when the state he or his organization resides in gives
an order.

But about the form one can indeed do much. No "Thank you!", no "I hope
we can work together again once the world has become sane(r)"... srsly,
what the hell.

No idea why they felt the need to do it that way, but it certainly is
not the open source way, neither is it decent or honorable.


That said, thank you for all your work, Serge!

I believe that nothing that has been accomplished with a candid mindset
and decent intentions is ever done for nothing, although it often pays
off way differently than expected.
So I hope this will be the case for you, too.

Take care,
Philipp

Thus even if it was still possible for me to send patches or perform
some
reviews, after what has been done my motivation to do that as a
volunteer has
simply vanished. (I might be doing a commercial upstreaming in future
though).
But before saying goodbye I'd like to express my gratitude to all the
community
members I have been lucky to work with during all these years.
Specifically:

NTB-folks, Jon, Dave, Allen. NTB was my starting point in the kernel
upstream
work. Thanks for the initial advices and despite of very-very-very
tough reviews
with several complete patchset refactorings, I learned a lot back
then. That
experience helped me afterwards. Thanks a lot for that. BTW since
then I've got
several thank-you letters for the IDT NTB and IDT EEPROM drivers. If
not for you
it wouldn't have been possible.

Andy, it's hard to remember who else would have given me more on my
Linux kernel
journey as you have. We first met in the I2C subsystem review of my
DW I2C
driver patches. Afterwards we've got to be frequently meeting here
and there -
GPIO, SPI, TTY, DMA, NET, etc, clean/fixes/features patch(set)s.
Quite heat
discussions in your first reviews drove me crazy really. But all the
time we
managed to come up with some consensus somehow. And you never quit
the
discussions calmly explaining your point over and over. You never
refused to
provide more detailed justification to your requests/comments even
though you
didn't have to. Thanks to that I learned how to be patient to
reviewers
and reviewees. And of course thank you for the Linux-kernel
knowledges and all
the tips and tricks you shared.

* Andy, please note due to the situation I am not going to work on my
DW DMAC
fixes patchset anymore. So if you ever wish to have DW UART stably
working with the
DW DMA-engine driver, then feel free to pick the series up:
Link:
https://lore.kernel.org/dmaengine/20240911184710.4207-1-fancer.lancer@gmail.com/ (local)

Linus (Walleij), after you merged one of my pretty much heavy
patchset in you
suggested to me to continue the DW APB GPIO driver maintaining. It
was a first
time I was asked to maintain a not-my driver. Thank you for the
trust. I'll
never forget that.

Mark, thank you very much for entrusting the DW APB SSI driver
maintenance to
me. I've put a lot of efforts into making it more generic and less
errors-prune,
especially when it comes working under a DMA-engine control or
working in the
mem-ops mode. I am sure the results have been beneficial to a lot of
DW
SPI-controller users since then.

Damien, our first and last meeting was at my generic AHCI-platform
and DW AHCI
SATA driver patches review. You didn't make it a quick and easy path.
But still
all the reviews comments were purely on the technical basis, and the
patches
were eventually merged in. Thank you for your time and experience
I've got from
the reviews.

Paul, Thomas, Arnd, Jiaxun, we met several times in the mailing list
during my
MIPS P5600 patches and just generic MIPS patches review. It was
always a
pleasure to discuss the matters with such brilliant experts in the
field. Alas
I've spent too much time working on the patches for another
subsystems and
failed to submit all the MIPS-related bits. Sorry I didn't keep my
promise, but
as you can see the circumstances have suddenly drawn its own
deadline.

Bjorn, Mani, we were working quite a lot with you in the framework of
the DW
PCIe RC drivers. You reviewed my patches. I helped you to review
another patches
for some time. Despite of some arguing it was always a pleasure to
work with
you.  Mani, special thanks for the cooperative DW eDMA driver
maintenance. I
think we were doing a great work together.

Paolo, Jakub, David, Andrew, Vladimir, Russell. The network subsystem
and
particularly the STMMAC driver (no doubt the driver sucks) have
turned to be a
kind of obstacle on which my current Linux-kernel activity has
stopped. I really
hope that at least in some way my help with the incoming STMMAC and
DW XPCS
patches reviews lightened up your maintainance duty. I know Russell
might
disagree, but I honestly think that all our discussions were useful
after all,
at least for me. I also think we did a great work working together
with Russell
on the DW GMAC/QoS ETH PCS patches. Hopefully you'll find a time to
finish it up
after all. 

Rob, Krzysztof, from your reviews I've learned a lot about the most
hardwary part
of the kernel - DT sources and DT-bindings. All your comments have
been laconic
and straight to the point. That made reviews quick and easy. Thank
you very
much for that.

Guenter, special thanks for reviewing and accepting my patches to the
hwmon and
watchdog subsystems. It was pleasure to be working with you.

Borislav, we disagreed and argued a lot. So my DW uMCTL2 DDRC EDAC
patches even
got stuck in limbo for quite a long time. Anyway thank you for the
time
you spent reviewing my patches and trying to explain your point.

* Borislav, it looks like I won't be able to work on my Synopsys EDAC
patchsets
anymore. If you or somebody else could pick them up and finish up the
work it
would be great (you can find it in the lore archive). The patches
convert the
mainly Zynq(MP)-specific Synopsys EDAC driver to supporting the
generic DW
uMCTL2 DDRC. It would be very beneficial for each platform based on
that
controller.

Greg, we met several times in the mailing lists. You reviewed my
patches sent
for the USB and TTY subsystems, and all the time the process was
straight,
highly professional, and simpler than in the most of my other case.
Thank you very much for that.

Yoshihiro, Keguang, Yanteng, Kory, Cai and everybody I was lucky to
meet in the
kernel mailing lists, but forgot to mention here. Thank you for the
time spent
for our cooperative work on making the Linux kernel better. It was a
pleasure to
meet you here.

I also wish to say huge thanks to the community members trying to
defend the kicked off maintainers and for support you expressed in
these days. It means a lot.

A little bit statics of my kernel-work at the end:

Signed-off patches:		518
Reviewed and Acked patches:	253
Tested patches:			80

You might say not the greatest achievement for seven years comparing
to some
other developers. Perhaps. But I meant each of these tags, be sure.

I guess that's it. If you ever need some info or consultation
regarding the
drivers I used to maintain or the respective hardware or the Synopsys
IP-cores
(about which I've got quite comprehensive knowledge by this time),
feel free to
reach me out via this email. I am always willing to help to the
community
members.

Hope we'll meet someday in more pleasant circumstances and drink a
couple or more beers together. But now it's time to say good bye.
Sorry for a long-read text. I wish good luck on your Linux-way.

Best Regards,
-Serge(y)