Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Great Series On How To Submit Patches

Throughout the years, I have spent a lot of time writing various articles and posts that encourage people to get involved with open source software. After all, you do not need something particular in your cv/resume that dictates whether or not you can contribute. It is open to all; essentially a survival of the fittest type of mentality.

Once you find yourself in this elite group of developers, you still must abide by certain documented rules to be successful. As a result, I noticed Greg Kroah-Hartman's six part series on "How to piss off a kernel subsystem maintainer". I find it enlightening and somewhat humorous (love the brought to you by at the end of each post). It appears in the latter part of the series that some contributors are now reluctant to send patches to Greg for the fear of providing him material for his rants. Hopefully, that will be short-lived if it is actually taking place. At the end of the day, as with a lot of things in life, there is a certain way to conduct yourself in order to be successful. As harsh as some might think it is, I am glad that someone takes the time out of their schedule to point out these issues. The end result should hopefully be a development process that continues to become more efficient as time goes on.