Hi,

[trimmed long explanation of how things are done today]

Antonio already showed that he can handle adhoc pull requests very well. Therefore, the idea would be to remove the two month extra waiting time. Here are just two random branch names:

• next - new patches are excepted here - so it is something like net-next

for batman-adv. Antonio will gather some patches and then sent them to David. Davids reaction will come heavy and hard... but the effort for an reaction is reduced.

• master - bugfix gathering place. So it is like net for batman-adv.

Patches will end up really fast in Linus' tree.

I am a little confused here. Our "next" branch will be the new "master" and the new "master" will be what "maint" is today ?

I also don't see the implementation of the new merge policy yet. David can only receive what we merged before but how do we determine what patch to merge when and how ? Up to now there was a simple rule (spawned from your head iirc): Features into master, cleanups into master, fixes for next into next and very critical stuff into maint. How is that supposed to work in the future?

One very vocal voice keeps telling me: Just merge everything into the "new next" - the rest will fall into place. No need to worry.

However, it would be great if your suggestion could be contemplated by such a merge policy. I don't see it yet. It would be even better if those who believe to know how it all will work out stepped up and took the job of collecting & merging the patches into the "new next". I certainly would not mind.

Cheers, Marek