Cox on Torvalds and Linux Kernel Development

sebFlyte writes "Alan Cox' speech at FOSDEM sounds like it was interesting... according to this ZDNet report on it he has some interesting views. For one, he says: 'Linus is a good developer, but is a terrible engineer.' He also has a few digs at Torvald's methods surrounding security fixes, and some other interesting insights in the kernel development process: 'Sometimes you see a fix and think "this is perfect, move my fix into the kernel tree." Later you think, "I must have been drunk. Don't apply that patch."'"

Comments

Re:Odd

[servognome]

Anyone want to guess which branch would be more popular?
For the geeks... Linus, for the companies with money... IBM
The money trail will probably end up deciding the winner.

nothing new

[sewagemaster]

the /. headline makes it looks like there's quite a bit of fued between cox and torvalds, which isnt really the case if you RTFM.

different people have different working styles, no matter whether it's kernel coding, software apps, or ASIC designs. if either group/individuals are too giving to the other group, there can never be enough feedback/ constructive critisisms between them. having yes-men surrounding you isnt the best thing. and it's not like that they're arguing so much they've halted any soft of development progress.

[offtopic]
gives me an idea though, maybe when job interviewers start asking me those behavioural questions about "a time when you've had disagreements and a way of resolving them", there's no need to bring up something too dramatic.
[/offtopic]

Re:Also for your perusal

[antime]

Heh, wonder why they cut out part of Linus' post quoted at the beginning? (The original post read "just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu".)

Sign of a Strong Working Team

[kmactane]

I'm sure everyone who doesn't bother to RTFA will now think, "Oh, no, Linus and Alan are bitching each other out in public." That's nothing like what's going on here. For one, the submitter quotes only half of one particular line from the article:

"Linus is a good developer, but is a terrible engineer," said Cox. "I'm sure he would agree with that." [emphasis added]

So it sounds like Alan and Linus have discussed this particular difference in their talents before, either over beers at a pub, or over email or something.

Second, the article makes clear that part of what's going on is that Alan and Linus each have very different responsibilities in keeping Linux going, and so they necessarily focus on different things. Alan points out that as the dev tree maintainer, Linus is trying to keep the code maintainable, while Alan's trying to keep it stable.

And both of these things are necessary. It sounds to me like rather than being "at loggerheads", or "ready to call off the working relationship", instead Linus and Alan are a very well-matched and complementary team, both of whom contribute enormously to Linux's success and quality.

Each of them has strengths that make up for the other one's weaknesses, and it sounds like they have a good enough working relationship to give each other constructive criticism when needed.