This morning while finishing up work on the concerning Intel open-source comments from Intel Tech Tour in Arizona and summing up the declining open-source contributions and departures of numerous Intel open-source/Linux developers from the company, yet another Linux engineering departure crossed my wire.
There was another MAINTAINERS file update merged overnight for the ongoing Linux 6.18 kernel. With the perf subsystem tool updates, which brought a new Python app for the in-kernel tree, there was another notable change.
The merge noted:
“- Kan Liang no longer a perf tools reviewer”
That name quickly rang a bell… He’s been a longtime Intel Linux engineer. Before that he led the Solaris graphics drivers work at Intel. Yes, he’s been around that long with being a 21 year veteran of Intel he worked on Intel graphics drivers for Solaris before shifting to Linux.
Ah the Sun Solaris memories…
Kan Liang is the one who previously worked on better Linux networking performance and in recent months landed a new Intel Auto Count Reload “ACR” feature in the Linux kernel.
His LinkedIn describes his Linux contributions at Intel over the past decade as:
“Maintainer (Designated Reviewer Role) of the Linux performance events subsystem
– Work with the Linux community to maintain the perf event subsystem and the Linux perf tool, and review the patches Member of Intel Linux kernel team, focusing on the performance monitoring area
– Lead the development of the performance monitoring-related support on Linux
– Drive the new performance monitoring features on hardware”
With Kan Liang no longer being now a reviewer for the perf tools code, I was curious and dug up the patch where he confirmed stepping down from the performance events position since he is leaving Intel:
“I’m stepping down as the Reviewer of perf_events subsystem. It has been an honor and a pleasure to work with everyone to improve the perf_events subsystem. However, due to personal reasons, I have to leave Intel. I believe it would be difficult for me to continue in this role any further.”
Another unfortunate loss for Intel and the Linux community.
