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List:       kernel-janitors
Subject:    My master thesis "Analysis and description of an open source janitor
From:       Håkon Løvdal <hlovdal () gmail ! com>
Date:       2009-09-20 20:29:53
Message-ID: a01a16b50909201329v7241b7amde22e580c75ccc6a () mail ! gmail ! com
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Dear linux kernel janitors and developers. Thank you very much for your
effort to the linux kernel development and special thank you to all of
you that answered my questions and participated in the questionare.

As some of you might remember, I contacted you about writing a masted
thesis some time ago
(https://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/kernel-janitors/2005-October/014300.html).
The thesis is available online at
http://student.grm.hia.no/master/ikt06/ikt590/g33/report_ikt06_g33.pdf.
Should it disappear some time in the future feel free to send me an
email to receive a copy.

I am sorry for not having written and presented the result to you before
now. The perfectionist in me wanted to write a much longer and detailed
email than this, but now I just have to send this in order to get this
of my chest.

To answer my own question from when I first contacted you about if the
subject was too little for one person, I have learned that for a master
thesis, given a good topic (like I believe it was), there will be always
lots of unanswered questions left at the end, so it would not have been
a problem working two persons on this.

Highlights from the thesis/results of my work:
==============================================

A particular interesting finding was the following. The accumulated
number of lines added in the unique set of patches that I examined was
29200 lines. The corresponding number of deleted lines was 50561. So this
means that the net contribution from the Linux Kernel Janitor Project to
the kernel quite clearly is a reduction of code (in addition to making
the code more correct and/or more maintainable).

Improvement suggestion: Getting new janitors on board is important. If a
newcomer is mentored well this will certainly have a positive effect. My
suggestion to strengthen this is to always give some feedback on patches
submitted by newcomers until they have x patches accepted and included
in the kernel. This will also give an initiative for the newcomer to try
to achieve "normal" level of being a janitor (maybe they could be called
"junior janitor" before this).

Best regards Håkon Løvdal
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