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Bcachefs Goes to "Externally Maintained"

(lwn.net)
214 points ksec | 1 comments | 30 Aug 25 13:07 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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Volundr ◴[30 Aug 25 17:08 UTC] No.45076237[source]▶
Damn. I was enjoying not having to deal with the fun of ZFS and DKMS, but it seems like now bcachefs will be in the same boat, either dealing with DKMS and occasional breakage or sticking with the kernel version that slowly gets more and more out of date.
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WD-42 ◴[30 Aug 25 18:11 UTC] No.45076818[source]▶
The article says that bcachefs is not being removed from the mainline kernel. This looks like mostly a workaround for Linus and other kernel devs to not have to deal with Kent directly.
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ffsm8 ◴[30 Aug 25 18:58 UTC] No.45077114[source]▶
The three listed options in the OP thread were

* Another kernel Dev takes over management and they tread it as a fork (highly unlikely according to their estimate)

* Kent hires someone to upstream the changes for him and Kent stops complaining wrt when it's getting merged

* Bcachefs gets no maintenance and will likely be removed in the next major release

I do not know him personally, but most interactions I've read online by him sounded grounded and not particularly offensive, so I'm abstaining from making any kind of judgement on it.

But while I have no stake in this, Drama really does seem to follow Kent around for one reason or another. And it's never his fault if you take him by his public statements - which I want to repeat: he sounds very grounded and not offensive to me whatsoever.

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1. sarlalian ◴[30 Aug 25 19:55 UTC] No.45077524{3}[source]▶
If you look at all the places where Kent has had drama, the common element is him and environments that have pretty rigid workflows. The common thread seems to be him not respecting workflows and processes that those places have, that inconvenience his goals. So, he ignores the workflows and processes of those places, and creates a constant state of friction and papercuts for those who he needs to accomplish his goals. They eventually get fed up, and either say no, not working with you anymore, or no, you’re not welcome to contribute here anymore.

He’s not super offensive, but he will tell a Debian package maintainer that their process sucks, and the should change it and they are being stupid by following that process. Overall, he seems a bit entitled, and unwilling to compromise with others. It’s not just Kent though, the areas that seem to be the most problematic for him, are when it’s an unstoppable force (Kent), and an immovable wall (Linux / Debian).

Working in the Linux kernel is well known for its frustrations and the personal conflict that it creates, to the point that there are almost no linux kernel devs/maintainers that aren’t paid to do the work. You can see a similar set of events happen with Rust4Linux people, Asahi linux project and their R4L drivers, etc.