13 Sep 2024

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Linux Plumbers Conference: Playback of Presenter and BBB Training is available

We recorded a playback of the 10:00 session which you can watch:

https://bbb1.lpc.events/playback/presentation/2.3/62e3456da3c0598910e28d204ee24b669d714c04-1725975646004

To get a feel for how the BBB platform works. In addition, your credentials are the email address you registered with in cvent and the confirmation number of the registration it sent you back. You can use those to log in here:

https://meet.lpc.events

And practice in a Hackroom (after logging in select Hackrooms from the leftnav and then pick a Hackroom which is empty).

13 Sep 2024 2:37pm GMT

30 Aug 2024

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Dave Airlie (blogspot): On Rust, Linux, developers, maintainers

There's been a couple of mentions of Rust4Linux in the past week or two, one from Linus on the speed of engagement and one about Wedson departing the project due to non-technical concerns. This got me thinking about project phases and developer types.

Archetypes:

I will regret making an analogy, in an area I have no experience in, but let's give it a go with a road building analogy.
Let's sort developers into 3 rough categories. Let's preface by saying not all developers fit in a single category throughout their careers, and some developers can do different roles on different projects, or on the same project simultaneously.

1. Wayfinders/Mapmakers

I want to go build a hotel somewhere but there exists no map or path. I need to travel through a bunch of mountains, valleys, rivers, weather, animals, friendly humans, antagonistic humans and some unknowns. I don't care deeply about them, I want to make a path to where I want to go. I hit a roadblock, I don't focus on it, I get around it by any means necessary and move onto the next one. I document the route by leaving maps, signs. I build a hotel at the end.

2. Road builders

I see the hotel and path someone has marked out. I foresee that larger volumes will want to traverse this path and build more hotels. The roadblocks the initial finder worked around, I have to engage with. I engage with each roadblock differently. I build a bridge, dig a tunnel, blow up some stuff, work with with/against humans, whatever is necessary to get a road built to the place the wayfinder built the hotel. I work on each roadblock until I can open the road to traffic. I can open it in stages, but it needs a completed road.

3. Road maintainers

I've got a road, I may have built the road initially. I may no longer build new roads. I've no real interest in hotels. I deal with intersections with other roads controlled by other people, I interact with builders who want to add new intersections for new roads, and remove old intersections for old roads. I fill in the holes, improve safety standards, handle the odd wayfinder wandering across my 8 lanes.

Interactions:

Wayfinders and maintainers is the most difficult interaction. Wayfinders like to move freely and quickly, maintainers have other priorities that slow them down. I believe there needs to be road builders engaged between the wayfinders and maintainers.

Road builders have to be willing to expend the extra time to resolving roadblocks in the best way possible for all parties. The time it takes to resolve a single roadblock may be greater than the time expended on the whole wayfinding expedition, and this frustrates wayfinders. The builder has to understand what the maintainers concerns are and where they come from, and why the wayfinder made certain decisions. They work via education and trust building to get them aligned to move past the block. They then move down the road and repeat this process until the road is open. How this is done might change depending on the type of maintainers.

Maintainer types:

Maintainers can fall into a few different groups on a per-new road basis, and how do road builders deal with existing road maintainers depends on where they are for this particular intersection:

1. Positive and engaged

Aligned with the goal of the road, want to help out, design intersections, help build more roads and more intersections. Will often have helped wayfinders out.

2. Positive with real concerns

Agrees with the road's direction, might not like some of the intersections, willing to be educated and give feedback on newer intersection designs. Moves to group 1 or trusts that others are willing to maintain intersections on their road.

3. Negative with real concerns

Don't agree fully with road's direction or choice of building material. Might have some resistance to changing intersections, but may believe in a bigger picture so won't actively block. Hopefully can move to 1 or 2 with education and trust building.

4. Negative and unwilling

Don't agree with the goal, don't want the intersection built, won't trust anyone else to care about their road enough. Education and trust building is a lot more work here, and often it's best to leave these intersections until later, where they may be swayed by other maintainers having built their intersections. It might be possible to build a reduced intersection. but if they are a major enough roadblock in a very busy road, then a higher authority might need to be brought in.

5. Don't care/Disengaged

Doesn't care where your road goes and won't talk about intersections. This category often just need to be told that someone else will care about it and they will step out of the way. If they are active blocks or refuse interaction then again a higher authority needs to be brought in.

Where are we now?

I think the r4l project has a had lot of excellent wayfinding done, has a lot of wayfinding in progress and probably has a bunch of future wayfinding to do. There are some nice hotels built. However now we need to build the roads to them so others can build hotels.
To the higher authority, the road building process can look slow. They may expect cars to be driving on the road already, and they see roadblocks from a different perspective. A roadblock might look smaller to them, but have a lot of fine details, or a large roadblock might be worked through quickly once it's engaged with.
For the wayfinders the process of interacting with maintainers is frustrating and slow, and they don't enjoy it as much as wayfinding, and because they still only care about the hotel at the end, when a maintainer gets into the details of their particular intersection they don't want to do anything but go stay in their hotel.
The road will get built, it will get traffic on it. There will be tunnels where we should have intersections, there will be bridges that need to be built from both sides, but I do think it will get built.

I think my request from this is that contributors should try and identify the archetype they currently resonate with and find the next group over to interact with.

For wayfinders, it's fine to just keep wayfinding, just don't be surprised when the road building takes longer, or the road that gets built isn't what you envisaged.

For road builder, just keep building, find new techniques for bridging gaps and blowing stuff up when appropriate. Figure out when to use higher authorities. Take the high road, and focus on the big picture.

For maintainers, try and keep up with modern road building, don't say 20 year old roads are the pinnacle of innovation. Be willing to install the rumble strips, widen the lanes, add crash guardrails, and truck safety offramps. Understand that wayfinders show you opportunities for longer term success and that road builders are going to keep building the road, and the result is better if you engage positively with them.

30 Aug 2024 1:52am GMT

23 Aug 2024

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Linux Plumbers Conference: Welcome to the Android Micro-conference!

Every year the Android Micro-conference brings the upstream Linux community and the Android systems developers together at the Linux Plumbers Conference. They discuss how they can effectively engage the existing issues and collaborate on upcoming changes to the Android platform and their upstream dependencies.

This year Android MC is scheduled to start at 10am on Friday, 20th Sep at Hall L1 (Austria Center). Attending Android MC gives you a chance to contribute to the broader discussion on Android platform ecosystem and Linux kernel development. You can share your own experiences, offer feedback, and help shape the future direction of these technologies.

Discussion topics for this year include:

Android MC will be followed by a Android BoF session, which will be a audience directed discussion. It can be a follow-up of the discussions from any of the Android MC topics or a free-form discussion on Android related topics.

23 Aug 2024 5:34pm GMT