The new drop-my-patch policy

[David Henningsson]

I have the following issues with the new drop-my-patch policy:

* First, and this is likely a bug, it seems to send out a threat emails 
even to fixes that come from upstream stable. For an example, see bug 
#640254.

* Second, I'm less likely to want to submit fixes to the Ubuntu kernel, 
as I usually don't have access to the hardware. If I fix a bug, I don't 
know if the user having the bug is even logged in within the next six 
days. So I will now take a large risk of having my work being done in 
vain, just because I don't know when the user will test my patch.
I could go via stable at kernel.org instead, but that will leave the user 
waiting for longer times - and it's not even an option for Maverick, as 
2.6.35 is no longer maintained.

* Third, I don't think it's in line with the Ubuntu spirit and policy of 
"Just works" and "Humanity to others" to let a bot drop their precious 
fixes, if the tester does not fill in the bureaucracy correctly (e g 
reporting back that it works but forgets to change the tag). At the very 
least we should offer a way to get the patch resent and retested.

* Fourth, I assume the original motivation for having the drop-my-patch 
policy is to reduce regression risk. But do we really know how much of 
regressions actually come from Ubuntu-only patches?

So far I think the drop-my-patch policy adds bureaucracy, and reduces 
willingness to contribute. In turn, this will reduce the quality of the 
Ubuntu kernel.

-- 
David Henningsson, Canonical Ltd.
http://launchpad.net/~diwic