On Thu, 2008-05-29 at 00:31 +0300, Pekka Enberg wrote:

quoted text
> On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 12:01 AM, James Bottomley

>  wrote:

> > Right, but that's why I think we have to change the process.  If we keep

> > the Janitors project, then the bar has to be raised so that it becomes

> > more participatory and thought oriented (i.e. eliminate from the outset

> > anyone who is not going to graduate from mechanical changes to more

> > useful ones).

>

> I'm not sure what you expect to happen if we "shut down" the Janitors

> project. The important janitorial work doesn't just magically

> disappear. For example, we still need people for:

I'm just outlining the possible solutions; shutting it down wasn't the

one I advocated. One can argue that janitorial changes with enough

intrinsic value tend to get done anyway regardless of whether we have

the project or not.
>   - Fixing API misuse

quoted text
>   - Converting code from old APIs to new ones

>   - Consolidating duplicate code

>   - Fixing error handling code

>   - Removing unused code

>   - De-obfuscating code (e.g. removing bad macro magic, etc.)

>

> And, quite frankly, I don't see what the big fuss is about. I know

> we've had way too many "whitespace cleanup" patches in the past six

> months or so, but can't we just NAK them politely and be done with it?

The problem is that there's something in the way all of this is working

that's causing politeness to get short shrift. In turn that's giving

lkml a larger than normal reputation for being a free for all dog fight

and discouraging potential contributors from coming forwards.
Appeals to be politer tend to only work in the short term (having given

quite a few of them).  I think we're developing a root cause problem in

the way we recruit people to work in the kernel and we have to think

about fixing it there.
James
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