Date Mon, 4 Aug 2014 07:48:11 -0400 From Theodore Ts'o <> Subject Re: [PATCH] v4l2: Change call of function in videobuf2-core.c On Mon, Aug 04, 2014 at 03:38:20PM +1000, Dave Airlie wrote:

>

> Nick has decided he wants to be a kernel developer, a laudable goal.

>

> He however has decided not to take any advice given to me by a number of other

> kernel developers on how to work on the kernel. So instead he sends random

> broken patches to random subsystems in the hope that one will slip past a sleepy

> maintainer and end up in the kernel.



So far, he has tried to do this with the ext4, btrfs, scsi, and usb

subsystems. I'm probably missing a few. I suspect he's jumping

around to different subsystems hoping to find one where his reputation

hasn't been blackened yet by his refusal to deeply understand kernel

code (or to test to see if it compiles, never mind trying to boot a

kernel with that patch and exercise the modified code) before starting

to try to "help".



Other theories besides the one that Dave has advocated that he's

trying to write a University Thesis on trolling the kernel development

process (either by seeing if an obviously broken patch could be snuck

past the peer review system, or to see if he can try to get someone to

lose their temper much like Linus is supposed to do all the time ---

not realizing that this only happens to people who really should know

better, not to clueless newbies), are that he's a badly written AI

chatbot, or just a clueless high school student with more tenacity

than one usually expects at that age. Or maybe he's trying to win a

bet, or is trying to get extra credit or to complete some course

assignment by getting a patch into the kernel. Or maybe this is just

the universe trying to demonstrate exactly how true the

Dunning-Krueger effect really is....



> He isn't willing to spend his own time learning anything, he is

> expecting that kernel

> developers want to spoon feed someone who sends them broken patches.

>

> We've asked him to stop, he keeps doing it, then when caught out apologizes

> with something along the lines, of I'm trying to learn, "idiot

> mistake", despite having

> been told to take a step back and try and learn how the kernel works.

>

> Now we have to waste more maintainer time making sure nobody accidentally

> merges anything he sends.



Indeed; if you see any patches from Nick on other mailing lists which

you follow, it's a good idea to check and see if said patch is garbage

--- to date, his track record has been remarkably consistent.



But please do it in the nicest way possible, just in case he's a

reddit troll or some "journalist" trying to get headline bait by

getting a kernel developer to flame him to a crisp.



- Ted





