Danilo Krummrich, one of the maintainers of the Nouveau driver, has prepared a set of patches for inclusion in the Linux kernel that implement bindings for the DRM (Direct Rendering Manager) subsystem, allowing the creation of graphics drivers in Rust. In a note, Danilo indicated that the proposed changes are based on the work of Asahi Lina, who developed the drm-asahi driver for Apple's AGX GPUs used in the Apple Silicon chip series. Lina, who created the first version of the published patch set, was marked as the primary author of the DRM ioctl binding and co-author of the other abstractions for driver creation.
Lina expressed dissatisfaction with this diminishing of her role in the development, feeling that the mentions of "Co-developed-by:" were insufficient in a situation where only cosmetic changes had been made to the patches originally created by her. For example, in the code drm/drv.rs out of 321 lines, 280 were written by Lina, while the remaining lines mostly relate to adding comments and minor rewrites of the driver registration code. In Lina's opinion, the code had not been significantly redrafted, and it would have been ethical to credit her as the primary author.
In response, Danilo explained that the patches in which Lina is credited as a co-author were restructured (the code divided into separate files) and significantly changed in places. The patches are published under the authorship of "Danilo Krummrich," since they did not exist separately prior to this. Additionally, Danilo believed that attributing modified code to another person would lead to dissatisfaction, as it would distort someone else's work. Previously, Lina had personally permitted him to borrow code from her past patches and use it in any way. At the same time, Danilo can easily credit Lina as the primary author, which he mentioned in his first message, stating that if Lina felt the mention in the "Co-developed-by" section was insufficient, she should just let him know.
Lina replied that by allowing her code to be used in any way, she considered the preservation of authorship to be a given and was not prepared for Danilo to put his name as the main author, as if he wrote a significant portion of it. Lina emphasized that she does not intend to escalate the conflict and is disappointed that simply splitting the commits is enough to change the main author of the code she worked on for many years.
After that, Danilo published a list of changes he made (the diff size is 1462 lines), showing that his corrections are far from being limited to just comments. He reiterated that he is not opposed to listing Lina as a primary author and that she simply needed to specify in which patches this should be done. Instead, Lina started accusing him of claiming authorship and devaluing his contributions to the development. He does not have time to engage in conflict, so Lina should just write down where and what needs to be changed without new accusations.
Lina replied that she regrets being part of such a community. Regarding the code, she requested the complete removal of any mention of her authorship and permitted the use of the code under a CC-0 license (waiving her copyright) as public domain, allowing use for any purpose. The waiver of authorship also applies to any other code written by Lina for the Asahi git branch.
After that, Dave Airlie, the maintainer of the DRM subsystem, intervened in the discussion, stating that the project would retain Lina's authorship in all patches containing her code, including modified patches, without going into details or trying to create drama.
Lina replied that she analyzed the changes and concluded that out of 978 lines of code, more than half is borrowed from her patches. In terms of pure code, Danilo added 270 lines, which are related to minor refactoring, not the creation of new functionality. When considering only the code, excluding comments, Lina valued her contribution at 75%. If the maintainers are not willing to remove the mention of authorship, Lina prefers her name to be listed as the main author for patches 3 to 7.
Recall that at the end of March, Lina announced the indefinite suspension of her work on the Asahi kernel driver, as she no longer feels safe working in the Linux ecosystem. Previously, in February, Hector Martin announced the cessation of development and stepped down from his role as the leader of the Asahi Linux project, also leaving the group maintaining the ARM/Apple platform in the Linux kernel. The reason cited was resistance to promoting "Rust for Linux" work into the Linux kernel and creating a hostile atmosphere for participants in this project.
It is believed that Lina Asahi is a virtual character created by Hector Martin. There is no direct evidence of this, but there are indirect signs. Lina has never appeared in person at conferences or streams and conducts all video meetings only using an animated character. The character's accent coincides with Hector's Spanish accent, but the voice timbre has been altered. Additionally, in several streams, the computer's name and the contents of home directories were visible — the computer's name ('raider') matches Hector's computer, and the home directories include /home/lina and /home/marcan (marcan is Hector's nickname and website).
Source: opennet.ru
