For eight years, Masahiro Yamada has been the sole maintainer of the kernel's build and configuration systems — two complex pieces of infrastructure that many people interact with, but few truly understand. Yamada has just stepped down from that position. Maintenance of the build system will be taken up by Nathan Chancellor and Nicolas Schier (in the "odd fixes" capacity), while the configuration system is now entirely unmaintained.

Thanks are due to Yamada for all that work, and to Chancellor and Schier for stepping up. Hopefully a way will be found to better support these important subsystems in the near future.