Multiple vendors seem to prefer taking discussions off list, and ask contributors to work with them privately rather than just send patches to the list. I'd imagine this is because it's hard to fit in time for random developers popping up with features to review into packed schedule. From what I've seen "work in private" usually means someone on the company side will be assigned to handle the interaction, possibly months later. In worst case, the person scheduled to help the contributor takes over and writes the code themselves. This is not how the community is supposed to work. Signed-off-by: Jakub Kicinski <kuba@xxxxxxxxxx> --- CC: workflows@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx CC: linux-doc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx --- .../maintainer/feature-and-driver-maintainers.rst | 11 +++++++++++ 1 file changed, 11 insertions(+) diff --git a/Documentation/maintainer/feature-and-driver-maintainers.rst b/Documentation/maintainer/feature-and-driver-maintainers.rst index f04cc183e1de..ac7798280201 100644 --- a/Documentation/maintainer/feature-and-driver-maintainers.rst +++ b/Documentation/maintainer/feature-and-driver-maintainers.rst @@ -83,6 +83,17 @@ bugs as well, if the report is of reasonable quality or indicates a problem that might be severe -- especially if they have *Supported* status of the codebase in the MAINTAINERS file. +Open development +---------------- + +Discussions about user reported issues, and development of new code +should be conducted in a manner typical for the larger subsystem. +It is common for development within a single company to be conducted +behind closed doors. However, maintainers must not redirect discussions +and development related to the upstream code from the upstream mailing lists +to closed forums or private conversations. Reasonable exceptions to this +guidance include discussions about security related issues. + Selecting the maintainer ======================== -- 2.45.2
