More Marcelo Tosatti

Frank writes: "There's an interview over at developerWorks Linux Zone with Linus's latest lieutenant Marcelo Tosatti. He talks about what it takes to be the maintainer of the Linux kernel, what his plans are for 2.4 and his favorite hack." If you missed it, you may also want to visit the answers Marcelo gave to Slashdot readers.

Comments

Alan Cox is free

[CanadaDave]

I'm just glad that Alan Cox doesn't have to look after it anymore. Now he can spend his time writing drivers and hacking away at the kernel source. As well as helping Redhat. He did good work maintaining 2.4.x but his talents could have been better spent elsewhere. Let's wish Marcello the best of luck.

Re:Alan Cox is free

[anpe]

Actually, he still mantains 2.2 series

Gotta represent (er, maintain)

[Skyshadow]

Does it strike anyone else as strange that the Linux kernel is still run by a small monarchy?

Seriously: Linus is the king, and he's surrounded by a small contingency of advisors who filter what gets through to him. I'm not suggesting that these people aren't all very deserving, but it seems odd that nobody else is cranking out any sort of alternative. MS or Sun can't be considered serious competitors (not on the same page), and all the BSD's seem to have been pushed to the fringe. This leaves other Linux kernels, and there are none.

I suspect this is because you just can't compete with Linus -- after all, he is the man. Still, it seems to me that this leads to a lack of internal competition in a very important area of overall systems development, which can't be a Good Thing (tm); consider how much KDE and GNOME have benefitted from having each other to race against. The kernel, on the other hand, exists mainly on the preferences of a small number of people.

Of course, Linus historically has shown great insticts; he's only been really wrong once that I can remember. This might sound like a call for fragmentation, but I still can't help but think that being open is good, but being open and competing against someone else is even better.

Re:Gotta represent (er, maintain)

[glwtta]

Does it strike anyone else as strange that the Linux kernel is still run by a small monarchy?

Hmm... has to be somewhat ironic that the backlash to the apex of capitalism (MS) has created a socialist system (the open source and free software movements) that is being guided by a monarchy, as you've put it.

go figure.

Re:Gotta represent (er, maintain)

[CanadaDave]

"...after all, he is the man"

which is maybe why no one tries to oppose him/compete with him? I dunno, I think maybe it's just because it's a waste of time making a new kernel, when you can just submit patches to Linus instead. You're forgetting that the Linux kernel is a community effort, and Linus is just the maintainer.

"This leaves other Linux kernels, and there are none"

Doesn't Alan Cox still have his Linux kernel? And isn't there another one by some other guy named Andrea?

Re:Gotta represent (er, maintain)

[fReNeTiK]

Linus is the king, and he's surrounded by a small contingency of advisors who filter what gets through to him.

Yes, but you may want to ask yourself how these people got there... It's because of the quality of their code and commitment to maintaining their stuff. So it's rather a meritocracy than a monarchy and that is perfectly fine with me.

Damn, just look at that guy Marcelo. He's only 18 and he's maintaining the stable Linux kernel tree... I'm in awe.

Re:Gotta represent (er, maintain)

[metacell]

There may be a simple practical reason that such a small group of people maintains the kernel:

It takes a lot of work.

Anybody can program kernel code (or at least try :) in their spare time, there is no time limit, so you can just use the time you have over, and do as much or as little as you want.
But maintaining the kernel is nearly a full-time job. It puts everything else aside.

Or what do you think?

Re:Gotta represent (er, maintain)

[Skyshadow]

Hmm... has to be somewhat ironic that the backlash to the apex of capitalism (MS) has created a socialist system (the open source and free software movements) that is being guided by a monarchy, as you've put it.

Hm, I'm not sure it's fair to present open source (or, more accurately, RMS's free software movement) as being a reaction to MS's complete success in the capitalist system. If you look back, I think you'll see that RMS concieved the copyleft because a number of projects he was working on suddenly went commercial, leaving his out of the loop and separated from the hard work he'd been putting in.

And Linux isn't the only OSS system, just the most successful. But yeah, it is a benevolent dictatorship, and yeah, that is somewhat ironic, but maybe that's the way it ultimately needs to be...

Re:Gotta represent (er, maintain)

[Eloquence]

Wow, good troll (in a positive sense!). I don't think that different modes of traditional organization would be really helpful because, as you say, further fragmentation may be the end result. But what I'd like to see is more "enlightened democracy", with formalized voting processes among those who care enough to participate. This would allow competing ideas, but at the same time secure an emotional majority behind one product. I'm not sure the KDE/GNOME example is really so good, the argument goes both ways and I'm more inclined to prefer a standardized desktop.

Re:Gotta represent (er, maintain)

[DA-MAN]

I got an idea, how about we start a couple of branches and call em....I dunno say NetLinux, OpenLinux and FreeLinux to compete with Linux?

Re:Gotta represent (er, maintain)

[ukryule]

Does it strike anyone else as strange that the Linux kernel is still run by a small monarchy?

More a meritocracy than monarchy (i.e. if you prove you're good enough you get the power) - in this case Marcello proved that he was technically competent and so was given the responsibility of maintaining the kernel.

Of course the difficulty with any meritocracy is who decides your "merit". Unsurprisingly in this case (as in most cases) it's the ones in power (i.e. Linus & Alan). Thus whether it is a true meritocracy or not depends on the abilities of those leaders to pick out the best contributors ...

Still, it seems to me that this leads to a lack of internal competition in a very important area of overall systems development, which can't be a Good Thing (tm); consider how much KDE and GNOME

Surely you're arguing for external competition? In which case, that nice Mr. Gates seems to putting up a decent fight. And internally there are several branches of the kernel floating around, and the major Linux companies often seem to bundle their own version of the kernel.

However, I agree with your central point that Linux does still rely heavily on one man. What happens when he stops running the show is an interesting question ...

Re:Gotta represent (er, maintain)

[Carnage4Life]

Does it strike anyone else as strange that the Linux kernel is still run by a small monarchy?

Actually the truth of the matter is that most successful projects are run by a small group of people (e.g. one to four) with absolute say and complete CVS access with a smattering of others who submit patches on and on and a number of others who submit bug reports. I've actively monitored Open Source projects of various sizes including Scoop, JDEE, Mono and Xindice where the general case seems to be that core development was done by one to four members of the team who controlled most or all of the project with token contributions coming in from a few more.

In fact the recent Slashdot article on KOffice did nothing but reinforce the notion that I've long since suspected that most Free Software/Open Source projects are primarily the work of a small, autocratic team regardless of the size or scope of the project.

Re:Gotta represent (er, maintain)

[nickco3]

However, I agree with your central point that Linux does still rely heavily on one man. What happens when he stops running the show is an interesting question ...

That's easy. The new Kernel King will be Alan Cox, or possibly one of the other members of ZZ-Top.
--
Nick
"Hallo. This is Beel Gates, und I say WEENdoze".

Re:Gotta represent (er, maintain)

[bankman]

However, I agree with your central point that Linux does still rely heavily on one man. What happens when he stops running the show is an interesting question ...

In a way you could view the fact that first Alan and now Marcelo is maintaining the stable branch as a test to what could happen if Linus were to reitre entirely from Linux. So far it has been working quite well and I think that in the long run capable people will show up who could follow in his footprints.

I don't follow the kernel mailing list closely, but if Linus were to retire right now, I guess someone like Alan could step up to the plate and become the next meritocrat (as opposed to monarch). I believe that the meritocracy that has developed in the open source world is a damn Good Thing (TM). Democracy has failed societies over and over again (most prominently: Germany in the thirties, USA right now. Hell, almost all democratic systems are seriously flawed and have become increasingly unwilling to make decent decisions, because every major step in whatever direction might impact on the next ellection.). I still believe that a free democracy is the best political system that we can apparently think of, but in all succesful ventures (I can think of) there was one person who made the final decision and a system based on meritocracy can serve us best. As opposed to a system were the most unscrupulous or best funded person rises to the top.

Re:Gotta represent (er, maintain)

[glwtta]

I wasn't really talking about RMS's intentions, but rather the movements (yes I specifically mentioned both the open source and the free software movements, thought I guess the latter doesn't really apply - I don't know too much about the specifics of their "ideals"), I was rather talking about the state of things today, where most (I am fairly certain) people use free software and contribute to it because they either want something better than microsoft, or don't want to be MS's bitch.

And you are right, while the Linux kenel is more of a monarchy, most of the fee software projects are purely socialist systems (not that there's anything wrong with that)

As a side note, it's long been held that benevolent despotism is in fact the best form of government (provided you have a good despot), it's just unworkable over the long term because of our sadly short life-spans.

Competition is there I think..

[stray]

I'd say the competition is right there, between the contributors. For one problem, various people might submit different patches and solutions, and eventually one of those is chosen to make it into the kernel. Arguably, that is a kind of competition.

Right, it's not driven by market forces but decisions are made by the kernel maintainers, but still... I'd say a lot of people use patches (especially driver stuff) before they make it into the kernel tree, so there's a certain amount of democratic feedback going on abour what patch might be the best for a task or a problem.

Competition in the Kernel.

[metacell]

I think there isn't any competition between different Linux kernels, simply because it's not needed. The current team is doing such a good job, and it's easier and better to make an addition to the kernel than to split the source tree.

Or are we talking about the user's need to choose between different kernels?
Well, you can run roughly the same software on the FreeBSD kernel as you can on Linux. Gnome, Konqueror, Ghostscript... it's all there.
There aren't many commercial vendors selling BSD versions, but that doesn't matter so much when you can just get BSD and install the software you need yourself.

But if there was a significant need for alternative Linux kernels, I'm sure the competition would crop up faster than you can say "ego-boosting Linux fanatic". ;-)

Re:Marcelo

[DA-MAN]

Oh come on, give him a break. So far the only mistake was the 2.4.17rc3/2.4.18 error. He's a human, we all make mistakes. He's doing a good job and things are stabilizing at a good rate. If you don't like it, submit a patch. Make a difference, don't talk shit. Or if you're not technically capable of that, how about writing up a Linux Kernel HOW-TO. Come up with a process, if it's good it may end up actually being used. He seems to be a guy pretty open to anything.

Wow. Talk about rewriting history.

[Carnage4Life]

If you look back, I think you'll see that RMS concieved the copyleft because a number of projects he was working on suddenly went commercial, leaving his out of the loop and separated from the hard work he'd been putting in.

Interesting, I've never heard this version of events before.

I thought RMS started Free Software after the issue with the printer driver.

<irony> A MSFT employee correcting someone with a 3-digit slashdot UID on the origin of copyleft </irony>

Re:Wow. Talk about rewriting history.

[gmack]

Your taking a page from a site titled "humorix" and calling it history? Re read that page and you will discover it's a JOKE.

Re:Wow. Talk about rewriting history.

[Skyshadow]

Interesting; I'm taking my version ofthe story from p. 194-195 of Linus's book "Just for Fun". It could well be glossing things over, though.

Re:Wow. Talk about rewriting history.

[Garen]

I thought RMS started Free Software after the issue with the printer driver.


Then you are mistaken as well. RMS uses that as a canonical example of the ills of copywrite and his take on its "antisocial" effect, but he didn't set off to do the whole GNU thing until after '82-83 where he spent time working on LISP systems that competed with Symbolics which he perceived to be the chief parasite at the time most responsible for the "rape" of the MIT AI lab.

Symbolics didn't rip off RMS' work though, which is what the previous post suggests. Infact, the situation was more of the reverse. To quote Symbolics president at the time from Hackers:

• 
  "We develop a program or an advancement to our operating system and make it work, and that may take three months, and then under our agreement with MIT, we give that to them. And then [Stallman] compares it with the old ones and looks at that and sees how it works and reimplements it [for the LMI machines]. He calls it reverse engineering. We call it theft of trade secrets. "
  

Good job?

[NWT]

dW: How will you tell whether or not you're doing a good job?
Tosatti: When I stop receiving bug reports.

Score +4, Funny

Hurd - would you really use it presently ?

[kybernator]

...for anything else than testing and playing around?

from http://kerneltrap.com/node.php?id=5

--

Q: How usable is the Hurd in its current version?

Neal Walfield: There has not been an official release of the Hurd since 1997. Most of the developers are concentrating on finishing the current feature set and working out important bugs.

With respect to usability, the Hurd works quite well as a desktop system, however, I would not yet recommend it to anyone as a server.

Q: How big is the team of people currently working on the Hurd?

Neal Walfield: There are currently about five people who work actively on the Hurd proper. As far as porting is concerned, there are about fifteen developers who participate regularly.

--

on the other hand, they integrated quite a lot of rather mature work from what has clearly been linux orientated development efforts, like filesystems, drivers and such - I wonder if RMS will call the final product GNU/Linux/HURD... :-)

Very smart question...

[asr_br]

dW: ...I read that you had been working at Conectiva for four years, and that you're only 18 now. How old were you when you started there?

Tosatti: I was 14.

Re:Very smart question...

[simm_s]

Yeah I can't believe the editor let that one pass ^_^.

Good move.

[sydneyfong]

Oh, that Slashdot interview! I didn't like it. I was doing a hundred interviews a day, so I was like, "Aagh, no more interviews!" and I answered their questions very fast, and people got angry because of that.

I guess the developerworks guys were smart enough to have the interview done at this time. Just imagine those "I'll work hard to maintain the kernel" answers they'll get if they didn't wait for a few months before they did the interview.

Re:Very smart question... - nit picking

[sydneyfong]

in event of rounding errors, the answer might be 13 or 15 ;-)

Why doesn't Linux do what everyone else does?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you send in a Perl bug report and used the perlbug utility, nobody has to ask you configuration questions because they have the answer. If you didn't use it, then they just say to send 'perl -V'.

With OpenBSD they use dmesg in the same way as 'perl -V'.

Why with Linux would they have to go back and ask questions? Isn't configuration information (detected hardware etc) available somewhere? Why not just have a utility that sends it in attached to your bug report?

There's plenty of kernel competition...

[SpinyNorman]

It seems to me there's plenty of kernel competition... If you read lkml you'll notice many kernel trees other than Linus's - Alan Cox's, Marcello's, Dave Jones's, AA's, etc... and the differences from the mainstream kernel can at times be as great as you could imagine while remaining compatible - different VM (AA/RVR), different scheduling (O(1), preempt), low latency, etc... or how about competition in journaling filesystems: reiserfs, ext3, xfs, jfs, etc.

A bit more outside of the mainstream you have things like the RT-Linux kernel or the L4 etc microkernel based Linux implementations, or for that matter even HURD as a Linux kernel alternative.

Finally, how many people even use Linus's kernel trees other than unstable version developers? The stable kernel trees leave Linus's hands before they ever become stable and actually usable, and the distributors like RedHat, Mandrake and SuSE never use his trees anyway.

Who is Marcelo Tosatti?

[rtos]

Who is Marcelo Tosatti? Well, I'm glad you asked.

• Marcelo Tosatti's homepage is here.
• There is also the Marcelo The Wonder Penguin site that has some info about him, but is currently down (Google cache).
• Advogato personal info
• Slashdot interview from December.
• Freshmeat has his comments on the kernel (scroll down a bit).

Hopefully you find some of that to be interesting.

More interviews like this!!

[kronstadt]

The insight here is just amazing. First question:

IBM - "What is 18 - 4?"
Tosatti - "14"