[camgunz]

IDK this stuff all sounds specious to me. If I envision a world where anyone who contributes Miculas' level of effort into the kernel gets into "kernel contributors", that world seems great to me. Linus wrote a whole new version control system, surely someone over there can figure out how to maintain a list of contributors.

> To ask for credit as a contributor makes it seem as though that was the whole goal

There's nothing, at all, wrong with this.

[jacquesm]

> There's nothing, at all, wrong with this.

I don't know about that. I maintain a small project and I've received exactly one outside contribution, and I made sure to properly credit that. Nobody is going to send me patches in order to gain social standing. But popular open source projects are a different matter and the maintainers there are hip to the fact that people use often minor contributions to increase their standing. Now: the OP clearly went beyond that, and I'm on the same side as another commenter here in that the 'Suggested-by' tag would have been the more appropriate one. But that's hairsplitting to me and if that's worth penning a post like this for, especially one that misrepresents the kernel maintainers words in a meaningful way then all perspective is lost.

[camgunz]

> the maintainers there are hip to the fact that people use often minor contributions to increase their standing

That's a fair concern but I don't think that's what we're talking about here. This isn't someone running around correcting whitespace or documentation to pad their resume. They did a bunch of technical and mailing list research. That kind of effort is promising.

> I'm on the same side as another commenter here in that the 'Suggested-by' tag would have been the more appropriate one

Yeah or maybe "co-author" or whatever (IDK anything about kernel tags). It seems pretty evident to me that Ellerman cleaned up Micunas' original patch using his kernel expertise. I'm not at all calling "plagiarism" or anything like that, but I am calling "collaboration".

> if that's worth penning a post like this for, especially one that misrepresents the kernel maintainers words in a meaningful way then all perspective is lost

I'm not sure what the original private email was so who knows if it's a faithful paraphrase, but I can forgive OP for being miffed and I could also forgive Ellerman for being irritated about being misrepresented. Someone should be the mature person here though, and--call me naive if you want haha--I'd look to the kernel dev for that.

[jacquesm]

For Co-developed-by status though it would require a properly signed off patch which this wasn't. And that's where you run into the issue of this being posted to a security mailing list for all to see: you've essentially started the clock on something that you no longer control and fixing the but takes priority over other niceties.

[camgunz]

Yeah I mean, I want to be respectful of Linux workflows and conventions. I just think it's hard to understand a situation where someone could put this much effort into improving the kernel and not get a contributor credit. Like, by the normal definition of the word it's definitely a contribution: it required a lot of technical skill to do, and he did try to follow kernel conventions when he was made aware of them. It's not really his fault that trying to contribute to Linux is a byzantine process where maybe no one will be at all nice to you.

> And that's where you run into the issue of this being posted to a security mailing list for all to see: you've essentially started the clock on something that you no longer control and fixing the but takes priority over other niceties.

Yeah, but on the other hand it's an obscure architecture and they took a few days to really process it. It also doesn't preclude them crediting him as a co-author.

---

I guess my overarching point is that, while this may be completely reasonable from a kernel dev's point of view--a person super steeped in kernel culture and processes--it's mostly nonsensical to everyone else. This issue is pretty simple. This guy did a bunch of work in good faith, tried to do things right, and some insider basically stole his thunder. That sucks! No amount of like, careful or sympathetic explanations of kernel workflows and semantics is really meaningful in the face of that.

I think the nail in the coffin is that everyone believes this happened right? No one needs to be convinced kernel devs are completely uncaring and insensitive. Maybe that attracts a certain crowd and maybe that's on purpose, or maybe it's just self-fulfilling, but at the very least it doesn't seem very welcoming. Either way, it doesn't bode well for the future.

EDIT: I said they took over a week to really process it but I misremembered, it was just a few days

[jacquesm]

I think that the main sticking point is that the credit for a contribution to the kernel, no matter how small is of sufficient value now that this needs more consideration from the maintainers. And Michael Ellerman actually agrees with that based on his response in the thread. I think a Suggested-by or even a Co-authored-by would be an improvement on the current situation. But the frame of mind of a typical kernel maintainer to me appears to be that they believe you want them to fix the issue, not that the credit matters more to you than the fix.

If I were in the position of the OP the LKML record alone suffices as proof that I contributed a major chunk of work to fixing a bug in the Linux kernel, and if I did feel that the credit was handled wrongly I would have taken that up with the maintainer. And finally, I would have done so right away, not a long time after and in such a disingenuous way.

[camgunz]

Well said, 100% agree