I no longer have any faith left in the kernel development process or
community management approach.

Apple/ARM platform development will continue downstream. If I feel like
sending some patches upstream in the future myself for whatever subtree
I may, or I may not. Anyone who feels like fighting the upstreaming
fight themselves is welcome to do so.

Signed-off-by: Hector Martin <marcan@marcan.st>
---
 MAINTAINERS | 1 -
 1 file changed, 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/MAINTAINERS b/MAINTAINERS
index 1e930c7a58b13d8bbe6bf133ba7b36aa24c2b5e0..c9623439998709c9d6d6944cbd87e025356422da 100644
--- a/MAINTAINERS
+++ b/MAINTAINERS
@@ -2177,7 +2177,6 @@ F:	sound/soc/codecs/cs42l84.*
 F:	sound/soc/codecs/ssm3515.c
 
 ARM/APPLE MACHINE SUPPORT
-M:	Hector Martin <marcan@marcan.st>
 M:	Sven Peter <sven@svenpeter.dev>
 R:	Alyssa Rosenzweig <alyssa@rosenzweig.io>
 L:	asahi@lists.linux.dev

---
base-commit: 40384c840ea1944d7c5a392e8975ed088ecf0b37
change-id: 20250207-rm-maint-af7cccc22871

Best regards,
-- 
Hector Martin <marcan@marcan.st>

On 2025/02/07 3:21, Hector Martin wrote:
> I no longer have any faith left in the kernel development process or
> community management approach.

As I was rather brief in my commit message, I feel like I should expand
on my reasons for leaving (particularly given a bunch of people [1]
think everything is resolved after Linus' latest proclamation and we
should just move on).

Many of you are probably familiar with my frustrations [2] with the
kernel process, which form the background motivation, and I'm unlikely
to have any desire to participate in kernel upstreaming again until some
of them are resolved. Similarly, the issue of kernel maintainers
attempting to block project progress, doing the Linux kernel version of
Elon performing the nazi salute [3] (make no mistake, Ted knew exactly
what he was doing with that line, and that it would be plausibly
deniable by the actual nazis and those unaware of the cultural context
or eager to grasp at straws to defend him), or generally being assholes,
certainly had an impact.

However, I should clarify that what pushed me over the point of no
return and to not only resign as a maintainer but also cease all
commitments to work on kernel code [4] was, specifically:

- A pile-on [5] initiated by a kernel maintainer, which was apparently
motivated by what can only be described as a blatant, deliberate
mischaracterization of my words [6]. I can only assume this was a
convenient excuse to lash out pent-up grudges against me in public.
- The hypocrisy of complaining about posting on social media while
posting and flaming about it on social media.
- The mischaracterization of my social media posts as "brigading" (by
three kernel maintainers including Linus, no less), which is a loaded
term [7]. I have been the victim of *real* brigading by the kind of
internet trolls who work to drive people to suicide, including
successfully doing so to one of my friends [8], and it's not funny.
- The accusation that the alleged brigading was a way of generating
attention for donations [9], which is quite frankly disgusting.
- Some even more disgusting stuff that came out in private and I will
not elaborate on here.
- The fact that all this came from kernel maintainers who I *thought* I
could work with, have had multiple discussions with in public and
private, and did not expect to privately hold grudges on me for a long
time while putting on a face, only to release them all in public without
so much as an attempt to discuss them in private.

I can deal with overt assholes, but I cannot deal with people who put on
a friendly face in private only to do a 180° later in public and stab
you in the back.

Sima, I wish you the best in "derailing, sabotaging and maybe improving
the Linux kernel from within" [10], but I have no hope left for your
approach. If you truly believe you've spent more time "handling the
fallout from my brigading" [11] (without ever communicating that to me;
also you really seem attached to that word, perhaps it's time to learn
what it means) than working on your approach lately, maybe it's time to
reflect on whether I'm actually the problem, or the problem is that your
approach also doesn't work.

Best of luck to this community and everyone part of it. I'm going to
take a long, long break myself.

[1] https://fosstodon.org/@airlied/114039656644172292
[2]
https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/208e1fc3-cfc3-4a26-98c3-a48ab35bb9db@marcan.st/
[3] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20250208204416.GL1130956@mit.edu/
[4] https://marcan.st/2025/02/resigning-as-asahi-linux-project-lead/
[5] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/Z6OzgBYZNJPr_ZD1@phenom.ffwll.local/
[6] https://lwn.net/Articles/1009671/
[7] https://hachyderm.io/@chandlerc/114001000657957325
[8]
https://www.vice.com/en/article/what-i-learned-from-near-an-emulation-legend-and-real-person/
[9] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/Z6YPfsDSNdRUskvp@phenom.ffwll.local/
[10] https://chaos.social/@sima/113942119012147959
[11] https://chaos.social/@sima/113962228220035362

- Hector

On Thu, Feb 6, 2025 at 1:31 PM Hector Martin <marcan@marcan.st> wrote:
>
> I no longer have any faith left in the kernel development process or
> community management approach.
>
> Apple/ARM platform development will continue downstream. If I feel like
> sending some patches upstream in the future myself for whatever subtree
> I may, or I may not. Anyone who feels like fighting the upstreaming
> fight themselves is welcome to do so.
>

This is disappointing to see; Apple/ARM support was progressing incredibly well and it's sad to see you resign as one of the subsystems' core maintainers. But based on what happened in the Rust/DMA thread, it was only a matter of time.

There are admittedly quite a few issues with the way the kernel development process works as well as how the community is managed, and I hope that it will improve with time. Hopefully your efforts will indeed continue downstream, and people will put in the effort to upstream your work with you having resigned.

I also hope that you may decide to come back in the future, if things do indeed improve.

Evelyn

Hector Martin 於 2025/2/7 凌晨2:21 寫道:

> I no longer have any faith left in the kernel development process or
> community management approach.
>
> Apple/ARM platform development will continue downstream. If I feel like
> sending some patches upstream in the future myself for whatever subtree
> I may, or I may not. Anyone who feels like fighting the upstreaming
> fight themselves is welcome to do so.

Hi marcan,

It is sad to see you go, I believe there are issues in the kernel development process as well.
Aside from Apple Silicon Macs, your work has greatly simplified the work
required for booting Linux on iPhones and iPads. However, Sven Peter is still listed as
maintainer, so for upstream purposes, will the https://github.com/asahilinux/linux tree be used
in the future,  or perhaps the tree should be removed from the MAINTAINERS file as well?

Nick Chan

On Thu, Feb 6, 2025 at 1:31 PM Hector Martin <marcan@marcan.st> wrote:
>
> I no longer have any faith left in the kernel development process or
> community management approach.
>
> Apple/ARM platform development will continue downstream. If I feel like
> sending some patches upstream in the future myself for whatever subtree
> I may, or I may not. Anyone who feels like fighting the upstreaming
> fight themselves is welcome to do so.
>

I'm sorry that it has come to this. You've been great to work with in
the Asahi Linux project and it's unfortunate that it's been so hard to
make progress in upstreaming support for Apple ARM platforms. I hope
that there's some reflection on both sides and there's an opportunity
in the future to rekindle and improve the relationship between the
Linux kernel project and Asahi Linux contributors.



--
真実はいつも一つ！/ Always, there's only one truth!