My first article; here goes nothing...

In this article, I'm going to talk a bit about how I became a kernel driver maintainer. And the answer is...I asked politely.

THE END

No...not that easily. But it was definitely easier than normal due to the circumstances.

Normally, one would become a maintainer by slowly gaining trust and expertise in a driver, and either asking, waiting until the position is offered to them, or until the maintainer quits. But the way I became a maintainer was a tad different.

See, the previous maintainer's email had been bouncing, and a patch had been sent to orphan the entry (because the maintainer's email was bouncing) but I decided to step up and give it a chance, despite never having sent a patch on that driver nor having any sort of experience, not even having the hardware. Surprisingly, Jonathan (the linux-iio maintainer) had approved this. Even I was astonished, yet I was excited to become a maintainer and step into a bigger role. It's great, I've learned a lot while being a maintainer, and I can't wait to learn more, even as I've been a maintainer for some time now.