The List is our Process: An Analysis of the Kernel's Email-based Development Process

Implementing safety-critical systems usually requires adhering to carefully defined development processes. Driven by the assumption that a disciplined approach leads to reliably high quality, they spe …

Implementing safety-critical systems usually requires adhering to carefully defined development processes. Driven by the assumption that a disciplined approach leads to reliably high quality, they specify how code is supposed to be developed, integrated and reviewed. While known to produce code that can satisfy the highest quality standards, Linux kernel development does not follow such strict patterns, although it is certainly far from a random process. But how can we ensure the quality of a mostly informal approach? Our work aims at identifing core properties, strengths and weaknesses in the development process by tracking the evolution of components from initial submissions on mailing lists to the final merged contributions.We discuss observations and insights and we draw, ranging form simpler questions like how long the average time from the first version of a patch submission to its final inclusion is, down to a categorisation and analysis of off-list patches and ignored patches.