Re: [MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] Time to call it quits for the maintainer summit?

On Thu, 6 Aug 2026 at 16:50, Steven Rostedt <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> I guess it really comes down to what Linus wants. He's been saying he would
> love to get rid of Kernel/Maintainers Summit for years.

So as you say, I don't love it. The original kernel summits way back
when was great and I enjoyed it a lot - but that was a *long* time ago
and the scopes were smaller and I think the problems were smaller too.

We had technical issues that were universally interesting.

Then the developer community grew and it became less universal with
the technical discussions often really just being cliques where some
developers were interested in particular issues and others that
"checked out" of that part entirely.

The maintainer summit was an attempt at keeping it focused on pure
maintainership questions, and keeping technical discussions that don't
cross maintainership borders in email or targeted miniconferences and
the like.

And it *works* in that sense, and I think it has been useful, but I
have to admit to still feeling like it's not wonderful.

For example, I keep generating the partial list of people that I think
should be part of it, and honestly, for the last few years it has been
a very similar list every time.

Which is fine and a measure of reality: it's not like the main
maintainers have changed very much - but it still makes me just think
it's also just a bit staid.

To explain that last point: back in the olden days, when we lived in
caves and communicated by grunts and gestures, and I still lived in
Helsinki and knew basically _none_ of the developers personally, I
felt that the Linux community was in fact a bit more "open" to people
because we didn't have this whole tightly knit community of old-timers
that the BSD's had, or the physical closeness that some other projects
had with all the developers actually meeting in person.

And I thought that was a good thing. No "in-group" behavior.

The maintainer summit being a pretty constant "in-group" is
fundamental, but it still feels a bit sad and wrong to me.

I do think we have things to discuss this year, but I do also think
this is a good subject to discuss.

               Linus