Comment by hmfrh
4 years ago
Nobody is an expert on every subject. You could have PhD level knowledge of the theory behind a specific filesystem or allocator but know next to nothing about the underlying hardware.
4 years ago
Nobody is an expert on every subject. You could have PhD level knowledge of the theory behind a specific filesystem or allocator but know next to nothing about the underlying hardware.
My point is that "we're newbies on the topic of the Linux Kernel, so be friendly to us when sending Linux Kernel patches" is the worst argument I've heard about anything in years.
I'd say that's a very valid argument in principle. If you want to start contributing to the Linux kernel, you'll have to start somewhere - but you can't start refactoring entire subsystems, rather you'll start with small patches and it's very natural to make minor procedural and technical mistakes at that stage. [1]
However, in this particular case, I agree that it is not a valid argument since it is doubtful whether the beginning kernel contributor's patches are in good faith.
[1] Torvalds encouraging new contributors to send in trivial patches back in 2004: https://lkml.org/lkml/2004/12/20/255
You have plenty of places to start. Fork and patch away. You don't start by patching the distribution the entire world uses.
It's like "be kind I'm new to the concept of airplanes, let me fly this airplane with hundreds of passengers"
How is it possible that you have a PhD in filesystems but you don't know how to write an acceptable patch for the Linux kernel? That's what I call a scam PhD.