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Kernel Contributor Corbet Says Linux Community Is 'Intimidating'
An anonymous reader writes "Key Linux kernel contributor Jonathan Corbet has admitted the developer community can be intimidating and hard to break into. He highlighted the issue during his Linux.conf.au presentation on the Linux kernel. Corbet expressed concern about the exclusivity of the kernel community, but says it's doing well regardless. He said in a period of just over a year, 55,000 individual changes from 2,700 developers (representing 370 employers) were made to the kernel, equaling 2.8 million lines of code. Corbet called the process 'alive and active.'"
Well exactly. Just because you spent a weekend learning how, and then made your own personal changes in your spare time, doesn't mean you actually have the know-how to help on the project. The Linux Kernal has been around for some time, I'd bet a dollar or two that they have put a lot of work into making it work properly and efficiently. If they want to implement something new, they are going to go with the guys who know the ins and the outs to make things as efficient as possible. Its a slippery slope where it could be excluding people who have developed a new methodology, meaning they miss out on a great opportunity, but thats just a risk they don't want to take.
It's the same as any industry. I'm not going to grab just any old guy to build my house. He could be an excellent carpenter - and maybe he'll even show me a few chairs and tables he has built. Superb as they may be, I'll still go with the guy who has built a house from start to finish.