Generally speaking: not these days, and not for a long long time. Mauro, for instance, worked for Red Hat at the time. It’s of course possible to be unpaid and work for Linux, but I believe it’s much more likely that one is employed by a big tech corpo and they maintain the kernel as part of their work.
Treat your volunteers well, or why should they continue volunteering?
Kernel maintainers have plenty of other opportunities.
I don’t know if they are volunteering or being paid. The other person said they are being paid.
Either way, no one deserves being talked down to like that, even if they made a mistake. It’s a matter of respect and self-respect. And as a skilled person like a kernel developer, it should be trivially easy to find other work in a more appropriate environment.
That being said, maybe I’m missing something. Torvalds has been known to be like that for a long time (although that seems to be over now). And still, Linux has been developed over decades. So apparently, skilled people flocked around Torvalds, or maybe rather his project. Not entirely sure why, but I’m taking it as a hint I might be missing something.
I would not work with or even for someone with such an attitude, not even for money. Ok, do it yourself, bye. Got better places to be.
Are kernel maintainers not unpaid volunteers?
Generally speaking: not these days, and not for a long long time. Mauro, for instance, worked for Red Hat at the time. It’s of course possible to be unpaid and work for Linux, but I believe it’s much more likely that one is employed by a big tech corpo and they maintain the kernel as part of their work.
That’s kind of two of my main points:
I don’t know if they are volunteering or being paid. The other person said they are being paid.
Either way, no one deserves being talked down to like that, even if they made a mistake. It’s a matter of respect and self-respect. And as a skilled person like a kernel developer, it should be trivially easy to find other work in a more appropriate environment.
That being said, maybe I’m missing something. Torvalds has been known to be like that for a long time (although that seems to be over now). And still, Linux has been developed over decades. So apparently, skilled people flocked around Torvalds, or maybe rather his project. Not entirely sure why, but I’m taking it as a hint I might be missing something.