Community

This page is for information about the embedded Linux and open source community.

Netiquette
Please read Netiquette before interacting with the Open Source Communities


 * Patch_Submission_HOWTO

General Portals

 * Linux.com - Linux community portal sponsored by the Linux Foundation
 * LinuxGizmos.com - the canonical (no pun intended) place for news about embedded Linux (and the successor to the now-inactive LinuxDevices.com, which is now available as a static, searchable 15,000 page archive)
 * Linux.org - an excellent starting place for all things linux

Hardware-Specific Communities

 * ARM Linux - the central place for Linux on ARM, this is where you find Russell Kings patch tracker for example
 * Beagle Board community - Portal for the Beagle Board community, sponsored by TI
 * OpenSourceMID.org community - Portal for the K7 OMAP3530 MID community
 * PandaBoard community - Portal for the PandaBoard community, sponsored by TI
 * Parallella community - Portal for the Parallella community, a $99 Linux supercomputer.
 * Raspberry Pi community - Portal for the Raspberry Pi community, an ARM GNU/Linux box for $25. Take a byte!
 * Snowball community - Portal for the Snowball community
 * UDOO community - Portal for the UDOO community. Android, Linux and Arduino in a tiny single-board computer
 * Improv community - Portal for the Improv community. A Modular ARM GNU/Linux and Android single-board computer system for everyone.
 * ODROID community - Portal for the ODROID community
 * NVidia Tegra community - Portal for the NVidia Tegra (e.g. Jetson TK1) community
 * Sunxi Linux Community - Wiki for Allwinner SoC based devices - eg. some Olimex boards, Cubieboard, Banana pi, ...
 * Exynos Linux Wiki - Wiki for Samsung Exynos based devices - eg, Odroid, some Chromebooks, ...
 * A31S Linux Wiki - Wiki for ALLWINNER A31S based devices - eg, Compact31s, ...
 * Toradex Community - Portal for the Toradex Community
 * Inforce Community - Portal for boards based on Qualcomm Snapdragon from Inforce

Software-Specific Communities

 * Moblin community - portal for the Moblin community (merged with Maemo to form Meego - see next item)
 * Meego community - portal for the Meego community
 * Yocto Project - portal for the Yocto project

Communities for beginners

 * Kernel newbies - General site for people getting started developing on the Linux kernel
 * Japanese site for kernel newbies
 * Embedded Systems Common Technical Baseline - Although not directly related to Linux this site is an excellent overview of what embedded systems are seen from various angles (hardware, software, design methods, etc...)
 * Community Participation Guides - Resources for how to participate in Open Source Communities.

People
This section lists inviduals who are "movers and shakers" in embedded Linux: For more Information be sure to checkout MAINTAINERS

Important kernel figures

 * Linus Torvalds - Linux kernel initiator and head maintainer
 * Andrew Morton - Maintains an important secondary (staging) tree
 * David Woodhouse - Embedded Linux maintainer
 * Matt Mackall - Embedded Linux maintainer, originator of Linux-tiny patch set (author of SLOB allocator), author of kpagemap and smem
 * Greg Kroah-Hartman - Initiator and maintainer of the Linux Driver Project / Staging Tree and quite a handyman
 * Stephen Rothwell - Maintainer of the Linux-Next-Tree, most stuff goes in there before getting merged into Linus' tree
 * Paul Gortmaker - Embedded Linux maintainer
 * Ted Tso - EXT4 maintainer, Kernel Summit organizer
 * James Bottomley - SCSI maintainer, Linux Foundation technical advisory board chair

Kernel arch maintainers

 * Arnd Bergman, Russell King - ARM kernel maintainers
 * Ingo Molnar, Thomas Gleixner, Peter Anvin - x86 maintainers
 * Paul Mundt - SH kernel maintainer
 * Ralf Baechle - MIPS kernel maintainer
 * Greg Ungerer - uCLinux/Coldfire kernel maintainer
 * Haavard Skinnemoen - avr32 kernel Maintainer (Atmel)

Feature developers/maintainers

 * David Woodhouse - MTD/jffs2 author, embedded Linux kernel maintainer
 * Andi Kleen - Author of bloat-o-meter
 * Ingo Molnar - Author of RT-preempt patch set, kernel scheduler maintainer, x86 maintainer
 * Phillip Lougher - Author of Squash FS
 * Jason Wessel - KDB maintainer
 * John Stultz - Mainliner of many Android technologies
 * Thomas Gleixner - RT-preempt maintainer, x86 maintainer, IRQ subsystem maintainer
 * Colin Cross - Google Android developer

Other People

 * Jason Wessel - Wind River Linux Architect
 * Sean Hudson - Mentor Graphics Embedded Linux Architect
 * David Rusling - CTO of Linaro
 * Richard Purdie - Poky originator, Yocto Project architect
 * David Stewart - Yocto Project leader
 * Bradley Kuhn - SFLC license enforcement agent
 * David Anders - TI contractor, elinux wiki contributor
 * Tim Bird - Sony Linux researcher, CE WG AG chair, ELC organizer
 * Paul Walmsley - OMAP kernel developer
 * Ben Dooks - ARM/Samsung arch kernel maintainer
 * Catalin Marinas - ARM kernel developer (developer of numerous ARM BSPs, as well as kmemleak author)
 * Thomas Petazzoni - Marvell SOC kernel developer
 * Michael Opdenaker - Bootlin founder

Interview candidates
The following page has a list of people we'd like to interview for an eLinux.org feature:
 * Interviews

Foundations and Forums

 * ARM Development Discussion Forum launched by Embest
 * Embest Product User Forum
 * CE Workgroup of the Linux Foundation (formerly the CE Linux Forum)
 * Embedded Linux Conference Presentations
 * CE Workgroup page on the Linux Foundation site
 * (deprecated: old CELF home page)
 * Linux Foundation

Linux User Groups
One way to get involved with a bunch of like-minded Linux enthusiasts is to participate in a local Linux users group. The following site has a good database of Linux users groups:
 * www.linux.org/groups
 * CLUE LUG List - Canadian User Group listing.
 * Bangalore Beagle User Group Meet

Development Model

 * The Cathedral and the Bazaar
 * FIXTHIS - add more links to papers and articles about the development model

Reasons for contributing to open source

 * Open Source ROI Model - a page about return on investment from open source contributions

Community-building ideas
See a discussion thread on this at: http://lists.celinuxforum.org/pipermail/celinux-dev/2012-September/000637.html

In 2012, Tim Bird proposed 4 activities to encourage more embedded Linux collaboration and community-building:

1. Resurrect the celinux-dev mailing list 2. more focused groups at upcoming conferences. 3. I'm looking for ways to invigorate the elinux.org wiki site. 4. more involvement in and use of the LTSI kernel
 * Ideas:
 * Use it more often for discussion
 * Promote on other lists (linux-embedded...?)
 * Introduce people who are using it to each other
 * Ideas:
 * have informal meeting places for specific topical areas
 * Ideas:
 * more contests?
 * Ideas:

Other ideas:
 * a 'planet' feed or news feed for embedded linux users
 * possibly: planet.elinux.org (Bill Traynor is working on it)
 * Thomas Petazzoni made one here: http://www.emlinews.net/
 * go to http://www.emlinews.net/submit/ to submit a news article


 * help bridge between embedded and non-embedded mainline developers (a'la Arnd Bergmann)
 * see reference to Arnd here: http://lists.celinuxforum.org/pipermail/celinux-dev/2012-September/000645.html
 * Better/open discussion on funded projects for embedded Linux
 * possible projects: mini-distro for software update
 * create a Google hangout for a discussion on this

Quality Assurance
This section has links to aspects of the development model designed to provide quality assurance.

Certificate of Origin
Developers who contribute code to the Linux kernel agree to the Developer Certificate Of Origin by signing their code, with a "Signed Off By" line.

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