It isn't sustainable, and it's a sign of bad leadership waiting for the proverbial (or literal) "hit by a truck" principle to show up.
You are correct in that it is the maintainers's choice. No doubt about it. But now, a potential contributor who invested a significant amount of time in a problem clearly nobody else had solved up to that point, was snubbed. The work was capitalized on, used as a foundation for a solution, and not even a comment giving credit was given.
This sends a terrible message not only to them, but to future contributors as well on a project that needs a new generation of talent to perpetuate it. This isn't just any OSS project; this is the Linux kernel, something millions if not billions rely on. Scale up this behavior, and it won't end well.
> It isn't sustainable, and it's a sign of bad leadership
It can be sustainable; not all FOSS projects need every possible contributor. Being a good leader is not a prerequisite, either. Direct cooperation isn’t even necessary!
The fact that source code is available allows anyone to fork and compete with the original authors. On average, only mismanaged projects will get out-competed by their forks.
You are correct in that it is the maintainers's choice. No doubt about it. But now, a potential contributor who invested a significant amount of time in a problem clearly nobody else had solved up to that point, was snubbed. The work was capitalized on, used as a foundation for a solution, and not even a comment giving credit was given.
This sends a terrible message not only to them, but to future contributors as well on a project that needs a new generation of talent to perpetuate it. This isn't just any OSS project; this is the Linux kernel, something millions if not billions rely on. Scale up this behavior, and it won't end well.