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Re:Asahi Linux Lead Developer Hector Martin Resigns from Lin... by roca on Friday February 07, 2025 @09:08PM (#42979694)
It's way more painful to contribute to the kernel than contribute to Firefox, at least, unless things have changed since I was involved with Firefox.

Suppose you find a bug in the kernel and come up with a patch. You email the patch to some kernel mailing list and ask for feedback. Typically, you will receive no response whatsoever, because no-one is responsible for responding. You can try emailing random developers and eventually maybe one of them will have mercy on you.

In Firefox and I think Chromium, you can file a bug, attach your patch, request review from someone (the UI will help you choose a suitable person), and it's their job to respond.

Re:Asahi Linux Lead Developer Hector Martin Resigns from Lin... by arghwhat on Saturday February 08, 2025 @02:50AM (#42981273)
In my experience it's the opposite - the email patch usually gets dealt with within a week or two, Firefox and Chromium dragged out because it wasn't whatever Mozilla or Google prioritized right now. Or worse, it might go against an internal corporate KPI.

In Firefox you have to fiddle with Mercurial, phabricator, and their homegrown CI. In Chromium its Gerrit and their homegrown CI, and oh btw you touched code that lacked tests so tag, you're it.

Re:Asahi Linux Lead Developer Hector Martin Resigns from Lin... by roca on Saturday February 08, 2025 @03:06PM (#42985767)
"The email patch usually gets dealt with within a week or two" is absolutely not my experience dealing with the kernel.

Firefox and Chromium's bespoke tools have their pluses and minuses but they're a lot easier to deal with that the kernel "workflow".

Re:Asahi Linux Lead Developer Hector Martin Resigns from Lin... by arghwhat on Sunday February 09, 2025 @09:58AM (#42991050)
That your experience is not shared suggests that the other "workflows" are not in fact objectively easier to deal with than the kernel workflow, but instead that there's a high variability in the frustration experienced across all three workflows.
Re:Asahi Linux Lead Developer Hector Martin Resigns from Lin... by mook on Saturday February 08, 2025 @04:39AM (#42981778)
I haven't touched Gecko in a decade, but your second paragraph sounds like my experience. My best record was something like a single character bug fix taking months (might have been years?). Yes, the review flag was set to the right person.

I still remember the story where some other guys had to meet some Mozilla folks for lunch and nag them for reviews…

Re:Asahi Linux Lead Developer Hector Martin Resigns from Lin... by roca on Saturday February 08, 2025 @03:04PM (#42985758)
I'm sorry you had a bad experience with someone, but at least you know who wasn't doing their job. On the kernel side, you don't.
Re:Asahi Linux Lead Developer Hector Martin Resigns from Lin... by arghwhat on Sunday February 09, 2025 @10:01AM (#42991066)
get_maintainer.pl gives you the list. Theres no equivalent in Firefox or Chromium to flag which Mozilla/Red Hat/Google/... manager does not consider your ticket an area of focus.
Re:Asahi Linux Lead Developer Hector Martin Resigns from Lin... by roca on Sunday February 09, 2025 @02:39PM (#42993107)
A kernel maintainer can completely ignore any submission with no repercussions even in principle. And they often do.

In Firefox, in my era at least, a reviewer who simply ignores a review request indefinitely was not doing their job and would get yelled at by someone --- me, if it came to my attention.