I think the only point of agreement on this topic will be that how bcachefs was handled wasn't correct at many levels. I think this shows we need more formality around feature inclusion, including a possible probationary period and even things like mentorship and we definitely need a formal process that extends beyond Linus for deciding we can no longer work with someone any more. I don't think anyone has the right answer on this so (shock, horror), this is a genuine discussion topic and one that would probably extend beyond the maintainer summit. The problem is that while the bcachefs saga did stray into CoC territory, the fundamental issues were technical and community not around conduct and I think a large part of the solution will involve discussing how you mentor someone in community building and how you objectively measure when they're failing to the extend that they're damaging surrounding communities. We probably also all have somewhat of an evolution of our positions on this as well so I can start the ball rolling by detailing mine. It's public that I thought bcachefs shouldn't have gone in in the first place: https://lore.kernel.org/all/?q=f:bottomley%20s:bcachefs for most of the problems it eventually caused. However after mature reflection, I think this was wrong: ab initio exclusion, even with valid and evidence based reasons, will make us into a narrow minded and ossified club. I still think there should be discussion of the ab initio problems but they should form part of the probation and development plan for the feature, so everyone knows they always have a chance to prove that they can do better than others thought at the time. It is probable that this probation and development plan can be evolved at the time over email (I don't think one size fits all is ever going to work for this) but a key point will be having at least one and possibly more existing maintainers being responsible for executing it (finding these people is going to be a challenge, I know). The second part is even more problematic: how do you measure forward progress during the probationary period and judge whether the training wheels should come off or the feature should be ejected? If there's a clear plan, then assessing progress against that solves some of the problem, but not all and if the final decision is no instead of yes, there needs to be a written down set of reasons for why this is (and possibly a post mortem discussion of how everyone could do better next time around). However, I'm sure others will have different ideas. Regards, James
