The Scalability of Linus

Hugh Pickens writes "Katherine Noyes writes at LinuxInsider that it may be time for Linus Torvalds to share more of the responsibility for Linux that he's been shouldering. 'If Linux wants to keep up with the competition there is much work to do, more than even a man of Linus's skill [can] accomplish,' argues one user. The 'scalability of Linus' is the subject of a post by Jonathan Corbet wondering if there might there be a Linus scalability crunch point coming. 'The Linux kernel development process stands out in a number of ways; one of those is the fact that there is exactly one person who can commit code to the "official" repository,' Corbet writes. A problem with that scenario is the potential for repeats of what Corbet calls 'the famous "Linus burnout" episode of 1998' when everything stopped for a while until Linus rested a bit, came back, and started merging patches again. 'If Linus is to retain his central position in Linux kernel development, the community as a whole needs to ensure that the process scales and does not overwhelm him,' Corbet adds. But many don't agree. 'Don't be fooled that Linus has to scale — he has to work hard, but he is the team captain and doorman. He has thousands doing most of the work for him. He just has to open the door at the appropriate moment,' writes Robert Pogson, adding that Linus 'has had lots of practice and still has fire in his belly.'"

Comments

Egos don't scale

[elrous0]

Arrogant people who achieve power never give it up voluntarily. They hold onto every little bit of it for dear life. Torvalds would no more voluntarily give up his ultimate authority than he would jump off a cliff. You can make all the reasonable arguments in the world, it's not going to change who he is. Linux is his baby and he's a jealous parent.

What is needed is a good new fork with strong support. Unfortunately, for all the bitching and moaning about Torvalds, that has never really come together. He is a driving force and developers have accepted his Linux kernel as the standard for a long time. There are a lot of branches out there, granted, but at the end of the day they all ultimately go back to the same tree. Getting developers to accept a new mainline kernel as the standard (and to give up the "Linux" name), and getting some superior distros out there (you would need an equivalent of Ubuntu) would require a lot of work, organization, and some charismatic leadership. The OSS community could handle the work part okay, but the organization and charismatic leaders parts--not so much.

Re:Egos don't scale

[Anonymous Coward]

A good new fork will only be needed if and when Linus stops scaling. Until then, the reason that a fork has never really come together is because Linus' Linux is the best all round solution.

Re:Egos don't scale

[soupforare]

Arrogant people who achieve power never give it up voluntarily.

Any fork would either immediately or very quickly suffer from the same fate. If there's anything the open source community has a surplus of, it's egos.

Re:Egos don't scale

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Given that, in practice, virtually every distro maintains its own kernel, or set of patches, to suit their needs, I don't really see the big deal.

As long as Linus is performing his role of keeping the "official" repository basically the easiest and most standard starting point, all the peripheral kernel tweaks maintained by other entities will cluster more or less closely around it for cost reasons.

If he starts to slip, the center of gravity will shift toward one of the distro kernel repositories, or whatever other third party is doing the best job of filling the role, and the "official" repository will fade in prominence a bit.

Because of how kernel code is licensed, the "official" repository could either come back quickly(if Linus or his chosen successor get back on the ball, they could update from the prior leader, and start taking the comit lead again), or it could just fade away, mostly, and development could center around the RedHat tweak of the kernel, or the Debian one, or whatever...

More dangerous are situations(like the X11/X.org one) where there is a major licensing split that actually requires a decisive move one way or the other. Linux graphics are certainly not its strongest suit; but, had the defection to X.org not been so complete, things there could have been a lot uglier today.

Re:Egos don't scale

[dangitman]

A good new fork will only be needed if and when Linus stops scaling.

If? You say this as though it isn't inevitable. Linus could be hit by a bus tomorrow, or (more likely) die of cancer in 10 years. He could even retire from the project! Either way, there will eventually be an end to his influence.

Re:Egos don't scale

[mcgrew]

Arrogant people who achieve power never give it up voluntarily.

Er, didn't Bill gates step down at Microsoft?

Re:Egos don't scale

[Sponge Bath]

...he is an arrogant idealist who tell stupid people with stupid ideas to fuck off.

Some of the people he tells to fuck off are stupid, some are not. Some of the ideas he shits on are stupid, some are not. I seen plenty of times on LKML where he is dismissive and insulting only to later actually look at the ideas in detail and then accept them. The acceptance is sometimes in the form of repackaging the idea by a different, more favored developer so that there is never a need to acknowledge the original contributor may have been right.

He seems to function well enough, but do not pretend he is perfect.

Re:Egos don't scale

[somersault]

He also said "and when" to indicate it was inevitable. This admittedly made the "if" part completely stupid.

Re:Egos don't scale

[GooberToo]

Arrogant people who achieve power never give it up voluntarily. They hold onto every little bit of it for dear life.

Why must a pet project, the owner from inception, held in high regard around the entire world, which has provided both personal and professional benefit, as well as providing much prestige, be attributed to arrogance? Unless your Buddhist or some such thing, most reasonable people would argue you're foolish to give up such a thing until your damn well ready.

Really, in exchange for giving up all that, what does it get in exchange? Nothing aside from more free time, as far as I can tell.

Re:Egos don't scale

[Kjella]

Linux is his baby and he's a jealous parent.

Well, last I checked AI development hasn't come so far that it can stand on its own and orphanages and foster homes are hardly considered the ideal way to grow up. Reality is that even though Linus does all the final commits to his tree, he most of the time pulls it on request by subsystem and driver and arch maintainers - it's not like one man reads every line of code. Changes to core code perhaps, but that's a very small part. That system of maintainers wouldn't go away if Linus was hit by a bus, most likely they'd have a little group vote and pick a new master repository. Linux would go on. I'd really hate to see him go though, he's one of those people that - despite maintaining Linux - decides to write a VCS from scratch and does it with high quality, high performance and quickly. 99 out of 100 others would have outsourced that to somebody else.

Re:Egos don't scale

[cynyr]

What you descibe was the way kernels were being handled in the early 2000's. The 2.5.X kernels were getting all the dev time, and the distros were back porting fixes. You are right though, if the Linus branch starts slipping, a distro or some other maintainer branch will become the "base" branch. The way it is right now there are several branches I could follow/use if i wanted to.
[N] sys-freebsd/freebsd-sources (--): FreeBSD kernel sources
[N] sys-kernel/cell-sources (--): Full sources including the cell/ps3 patchset for the 2.6 kernel tree
[N] sys-kernel/ck-sources ((~)2.6.34-r1(2.6.34-r1)): Con Kolivas' high performance patchset + Gentoo patchset sources
[N] sys-kernel/gentoo-sources (2.6.32-r11(2.6.32-r11)): Full sources including the Gentoo patchset for the 2.6 kernel tree
[N] sys-kernel/git-sources ((~)2.6.35_rc6(2.6.35_rc6)): The very latest -git version of the Linux kernel
[N] sys-kernel/hardened-sources ((~)2.6.34(2.6.34)): Hardened kernel sources (kernel series 2.6)
[N] sys-kernel/mips-sources (--): Linux-Mips GIT sources for MIPS-based machines, dated 20100605
[N] sys-kernel/mm-sources ((~)2.6.28_rc2-r1(2.6.28_rc2-r1)): Andrew Morton's kernel, mostly fixes for 2.6 vanilla, some vm stuff too
[N] sys-kernel/openvz-sources (2.6.27.6.1(2.6.27-kuindzhi.1)): Kernel sources with OpenVZ patchset
[N] sys-kernel/sparc-sources (--): Full sources for the Gentoo Sparc Linux kernel
[N] sys-kernel/tuxonice-sources ((~)2.6.34-r1(2.6.34-r1)): TuxOnIce + Gentoo patchset sources
[N] sys-kernel/usermode-sources ((~)2.6.18-r2(2.6.18-r2)): Full sources for the User Mode Linux kernel
[N] sys-kernel/vanilla-sources ((~)2.6.35_rc5(2.6.35_rc5)): Full sources for the Linux kernel
[N] sys-kernel/vserver-sources ((~)2.3.0.36.30.4-r1(2.3.0.36.30.4-r1)): Full sources including Gentoo and Linux-VServer patchsets for the 2.6 kernel tree.
[N] sys-kernel/xbox-sources (--): Full sources for the Xbox Linux kernel
[N] sys-kernel/xen-sources ((~)2.6.34(2.6.34)): Full sources for a dom0/domU Linux kernel to run under Xen
[N] sys-kernel/zen-sources ((~)2.6.34_p1-r1(2.6.34_p1-r1)): The Zen Kernel Live Sources

Those are my 17 options in gentoo's main tree, I'm sure i can find others in some overlays. Thats not counting things like following one of the dev branches of kernel. In fact just about anyone can have a branch these days, `git branch myawesomebranch`.

Re:Egos don't scale

[msauve]

"If and when..." is a common idiom in (US?) English. It's not supposed to be read literally.

Re:Egos don't scale

[renoX]

> Linux is his baby and he's a jealous parent.

I'll take your assertions with a (big) pinch of salt: remember Linus *created* a distributed version management tool (git) when he couldn't use anymore BitKeeper..
And the nice thing about DVCS is that anybody can have his own tree..

So yes, Linus is the ultimate authority about what goes in his own tree, but this is quite normal..

Re:Egos don't scale

[koolfy]

No ! You're lying !!!111!1!1!

Everyone knows that Linus is forever !!
Just like Steve Jobs !

Wait, what did you say about cancer again ?

Re:Egos don't scale

[dkleinsc]

Most of the bitching and moaning about Linus seems to be along the lines of "he didn't accept my patch" or "he tore me a new one for suggesting something", not "Linux sucks, I'm going to use HURD or FreeBSD instead". And that's an important distinction, because Linus' primary goal is to make Linux and its codebase as awesome as it can be, not stroke developer's egos.

So yeah, if you write up something that you think is a great memory management scheme that Linus decides isn't the best approach, you're going to be pissed at him, because you thought very carefully about it and worked very hard to create a patch. But that doesn't mean Linus is necessarily wrong, and also doesn't mean he's arrogant - it means he thinks there's better choices available. He's picking not from the best that you can come up with, but from the best that the much larger set of people who've ever considered this problem can come up with.

Re:Egos don't scale

[daem0n1x]

Having people working under your supervision adds to your power, does not divide it. This is a basic management principle. Bosses that don't delegate tasks can only stagnate when they reach their physical limits. Unfortunately many managers are too stupid to understand this.

Re:Egos don't scale

[Anonymous Coward]

The point of the fork probably would be giving less power to an individual. That means they don't have to give up power, because they never had it. Like giving a few people commit access to the repository instead of just one person.

Re:Egos don't scale

[somersault]

I can confirm that it's used in English English too. Doesn't mean it's not stupid.

Re:Egos don't scale

[elrous0]

He realized that charity was a much better ego-booster than being the much-maligned head of a big corporation.

Re:Egos don't scale

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be a twat or a troll. Torvalds does not control the kernel, he has many maintainers who have their own little armies that take care of everything. This has been the case for a number of years.

Re:Egos don't scale

[Eil]

A couple of quick points:

The Linux kernel is open source. Anyone who thinks they can do better can just clone it in git and start their own fork. You don't have to replace Linus, you can just be your own kernel maintainer. There's no part of the mainline Linux kernel development that takes place in private, so you can even "play Linus" and just merge only the patches that you like from the kernel mailing list into your own personal tree.

The kernel that Linus releases is not meant to be used directly by end users. Distributions are responsible for integrating the kernel into their operating systems as they see fit. They can choose to track Linus' tree closely or not at all. Red Hat, for example, rolls their own kernel that bears little resemblance to any of Linus'.

Linus' tree is widely regarded as the official Linux kernel mainly because he invented it and has stuck to his vision of how the kernel should be developed over the past 18 years or so. Most of the top developers and open source companies trust Linus and his management over the mainline kernel. Many have been around from the very beginning. Suggesting that they would "dump" Linus as the core maintainer is outright laughable.
\

Re:Egos don't scale

[dejanc]

What is needed is a good new fork with strong support.

How many open source projects "with strong support" can you name? Linux is, the way I see it, one of the biggest and most important open source projects out there, thus facing toughest challenges. In this decade, at least, I haven't seen that many complaints about stability of the project.

Compare that to projects like OpenOffice and their challenges, or the time CentOS's boss ran away with the key...

There is no guarantee that changing who controls Linux will have a positive impact on the project. Personally, I don't even see any problems within the project that can't be solved internally...

Re:Egos don't scale

[negRo_slim]

Doesn't mean it's not stupid? Coming from the guy busting out 'English English'.

Is that the form of English spoken in England? What do they think of that in Wales and Scotland? Is it compatible with British English or the Queen's English? Do tell.

Re:Egos don't scale

[blai]

anomalies don't count

Re:Egos don't scale

[negRo_slim]

All this talking about the man first name and all, like you people really know him. I'm beginning to think the FOS ego's are really with the users and less so with the devs.

Re:Egos don't scale

[Anonymous Coward]

Good luck with the FreeBSD kernel on Gentoo. Also try sparc-sources on x86!

Re:Egos don't scale

[GreyWolf3000]

Con? Is that you?

Re:Egos don't scale

[Yvanhoe]

Arrogant people who achieve power never give it up voluntarily. They hold onto every little bit of it for dear life. Torvalds would no more voluntarily give up his ultimate authority than he would jump off a cliff. You can make all the reasonable arguments in the world, it's not going to change who he is. Linux is his baby and he's a jealous parent.

Interestingly, humble but smart people would end up in the same situation : they know that arrogant and power-hungry people are there and want power for the sake of their ego. I don't know if Linus is humble or arrogant, but he gave up power a long time ago when he put his OS under an open-source licence. He has never hidden the fact that he was a "benevolent dictator" (some even say the expression comes from his second surname : Benedict). If Linus is a bottleneck and slows down kernel development, there will be a fork. Right now, as much as people say he is a problem, he is still the only solution available.

What is good about open-source is that you can say to power-hungry people "Want to be the boss of a team ? Well go find a team that will respect your work !".

Re:Egos don't scale

[somersault]

Actually, thinking about it logically I suppose the actual meaning of the structure does in fact simply equate to "if". When when is true, if will be true, and vice versa.

if ($if_) { $when = true; }
if ($when) { $if_ = true; }
if ($if_ && $when) { return true; }

# better written as

if ($if_ | when ) { return true; }

So the "and when" logically equates to "or when", both of which are completely pointless additions to the if, but the "and when" still somehow manages to make it sound like the speaker or writer believes that the situation is actually inevitable, something they've only just realised after saying "if"..

Re:Egos don't scale

[shadowofwind]

The 'if and when' idiom does make literal sense. It means 'when it happens, if it does happen'. Your interpretation, in binary logic, would be 'if or when', not 'if and when'. (If 'A and B', and 'A' is false, then 'A and B' is false also. The 'B' doesn't render the 'A' part moot.)

Re:Egos don't scale

[sardaukar_siet]

FreeBSD gets by democratically enough...

Re:Egos don't scale

[Anonymous Coward]

"Arrogant" people who have earned power are labelled as such when they exhibit the slightest bit of self interest or even self esteem. How do you identify the truly successful? You identify them by the shrill demands that they grovel before everyone they've ever dared to help. You identify them by the legions of people demanding that they give up their "power," their influence gained solely by virtue of the popularity of the fruits of their labor. You identify them by the stink of sour grapes from unwashed mouthbreathers whose lives' worth of work would be valued in red ink.

Egos scale just fine. But Linus has no more of an ego than when he wrote the first line of Linux; when he had the audacity to think anyone would want to use something he created. The people around him just got smaller and smaller, until one day he appeared larger than life to them.

Re:Egos don't scale

[somersault]

I was originally going to write "UK English" but settled on English English as a joke. It's just as correct as "American English".

Fair questions.. let's ask a guy who is Scottish and lives in Scotland, shall we?

Me: Hi, Somersault!
Me: Hello there, you handsome devil!
Me: Yeah, whatever. What do you think of all this "English English" stuff you were saying earlier?
Me: I find it amusing.
Me: Oh, I see!
Me: Yep.
Me: Well, bye!
Me: Bye.

Re:Egos don't scale

[elrous0]

I'm a long-shot kind of guy. So I took "Eaten by a bear in 2021" in the Torvalds death pool. Sure it's unlikely, but the odds make the payout HUGE if it happens.

Re:Egos don't scale

[tehcyder]

Having an ego boost is not the same thing as having real power.

Re:Egos don't scale

[somersault]

Sure, but the A part does render the B part moot, so in spoken/written language the fact that you've added in the B part makes it seem like the "and" must have some relevance. That's how it always seemed to me at least - wasn't until today that I tried thinking about this phrase logically to see that it does just equate to "if".

Re:Egos don't scale

[maxwell demon]

It isn't inevitable. There's the (admittedly remote) chance that Linux becomes obsolete (due to the rise of another OS) before Linus stops scaling.

Re:Egos don't scale

[sam_nead]

Do you have strong examples you can point to?

Re:Egos don't scale

[Richard Steiner]

If there's anything the open source community has a surplus of, it's egos.

This is true of programmers ... or humanity ... in general.

Re:Egos don't scale

[shadowofwind]

Then 'when' part tells you that you mean to wait for the event to happen, rather than act beforehand in anticipation of the event.

Not like any of this matters much.

Re:Egos don't scale

[LaminatorX]

<cough>schedulers</cough>

Re:Egos don't scale

[h4rm0ny]

He realized that charity was a much better ego-booster than being the much-maligned head of a big corporation.

Wow! Some people just can't win, can they? Get involved in big charity work, you're just feeding your ego. Anyway, those were some pretty strong words about Linus that you kicked off this discussion with. I take it you either know him personally or have worked with him fairly closely?

Re:Egos don't scale

[Anonymous Coward]

Or he thought about his legacy and wished to be remembered like Andrew Carnegie.

Re:Egos don't scale

[hyartep]

there are two main reasons for this:

* some people have clever ideas put bad way. linus is (unfortunately) too busy, to check every idea, so he skips them (sometimes), if they are not polished (enough for him)

* there are people he trust more, and people he does not know well enough (as a kernel developer). therefore, if some idea is programmed by developer with trust, there is better possibility to be accepted.

Re:Egos don't scale

[BobMcD]

Others have attempted to explain the idiom, but I feel it actually serves a very useful purpose:

'if' means 'uncertain immediate possibility'
'when' means 'certain eventuality'

'If it happens' means it could happen at any moment, and we should prepare. "If we get into an accident, call 911."

'When it happens' means it will occur somewhere down the road. "When we need gas, we'll find a station and stretch our legs."

'If and when it happens' combines these two concepts for events that could occur at any moment, but are likely to be somewhere off down the road. "If and when we get a flat, this is how you change the tire."

Nuances are what make our language great. Please don't work so hard to sterilize it.

Re:Egos don't scale

[StuartHankins]

And yet some of this behavior is required to keep things going as well as it has. Just imagine a day in his life, a mix of technical issues, coordination, flames and people wanting attention because they think their idea is the best. That's assuming you ignore personal issues and demands for time.

I don't have anywhere near his skills / reputation / influence / pressure, and the days when I have to fend off multiple groups of people demanding time, technical issues, and balance that with my schedule are draining for me. Some days I get to relax with hands-on physical work instead of managing systems, even if it's crimping cables, moving equipment or rearranging my office. Having his responsibility and maintaining his pace long-term would probably (understandably?) increase my self-worth (ego) and frustration to the point that I'd be seen in a negative way.

When you work in a high-performance way you can become very intolerant of others' shortcomings because you just assume that if you can do something that they can do it too, and if you "get it", then they of course should be able to comprehend it too. The limitations of language and slow communication speed are bothersome, you want to do a brain dump but teaching one thing requires a host of background on other issues so you have to start from the beginning, which takes time and effort you probably don't want to spend.

So perhaps with his imperfections he is the best person for the job at this time, and perhaps that will be delegated more to others in the future. All we know is that at some point passing the baton will be required and hope for a successful switchover.

The same can be said of influential people in various sectors of industry. What happens with Apple when Steve Jobs is no longer there? Microsoft after Bill Gates (I know he's out of the picture somewhat, but really he's not totally out of the loop yet). Samba team after Jeremy Allison. There are so many more influential people in huge roles that I see this as part of the necessary burden of being so good at what you do that others pale in comparison. Future generations will have to sort it out when these people leave, and hopefully they're grooming the apprentices so they can be ready when needed.

Re:Egos don't scale

[Anonymous Coward]

No operating system has lived longer than the average human.

Re:Egos don't scale

[Beardo the Bearded]

Wait, he does all the committing to the kernel himself? Basically, you're saying if M$ paid him, say, a billion dollars to retire to Aruba and never touch Linux again, Linux would be over forever.

That's... interesting.

Re:Egos don't scale

[gaffatape]

I can fully understand Linus. He has an idea about what Linux should be. Why would he let his vision of the perfect system go a route to an imperfect one he's not passionate about? That would just be like a boring day job. He hands out the source code every day and allow people to create derived versions. If you have visions for the kernel, different than those of Linus, then you are free to do something about it, with very little effort compared to what Linus has done. Stop talking bad about a guy who has done nothing else than to create something he was passionate about and still is.

Re:Egos don't scale

[Dan667]

read Mythical Man Month. If you do you will discover that most successful software projects have one central strong lead. An analogy would be if you are having surgery would you want 5 surgeons in charge of it, all with different opinions and arguing while you are on the table on how to do it?

Re:Egos don't scale

[Anonymous Coward]

"if" indicates simple relation of events. Because, to the best of our knowledge, the universe is causal, this basically means that the condition must occur before the predicate is possible.

"when" indicates concurrency, weakly implies causality, but also strongly implies inevitability.

Therefore, "if and when" is not an entirely redundant statement. "if" does not provide any guarantee of timing (in particular the immediacy of the ensuing result) and "when" on its own is to certain. So "If and when" is really just an idiomatic way of expressing "If ... then ... immediately".

Re:Egos don't scale

[bonch]

I suggest making this a thesis.

Re:Egos don't scale

[eyrieowl]

Best all round solution != Best possible all round solution. And there should be a little more planning for the "hit-by-a-bus" scenario. No sane developer would want that sort of single-point-of-failure in a system they develop...why are they willing to accept it when it's wet-ware instead of hardware/software? There needs to be a succession plan, period. That's the bigger issue imo. The scaling thing? That might be a bonus, it may be unnecessary, I surely don't know. But acting like the status quo is the best of all possible worlds is just foolish.

Re:Egos don't scale

[BrokenHalo]

Fortunately, Linus doesn't seem to be like Steve Jobs. I've seen any number of (usually blog) postings that suggest that Linus is arrogant, but when I read his actual reported comments, they just seem opinionated at worst.

Personally, I have never known a single great programmer who isn't opinionated. I'm opinionated, and I'm nothing like the programmer he is. (Probably fortunately, otherwise I would never have got out as much, but that's another matter.)

Sure, he's held the reins of the kernel project for as long as it's been around, but if he were to drop dead tomorrow there might be some confusion, and we would see a few forks. But those have always existed, so I don't see anything to worry about there.

Re:Egos don't scale

[somersault]

You mean exactly like the "if" part?

And yeah it doesn't really matter. Especially since my original post was obviously wrong now that I've thought about it ;)

Re:Egos don't scale

[bonch]

The open source community is particularly ego-driven because it is volunteer work. There is no threat of getting fired, no reprimanding from a boss for being antisocial, and no humble assignment to a mundane programming task that isn't fun but must be completed.

Re:Egos don't scale

[OnB]

Wow. You must be his psychologist. You have so much insight into his motivations.

Re:Egos don't scale

[somersault]

The way my own brain perceives the nuances of "if and when" still naturally just makes me think someone is implying something that will definitely happen at some point because of the "and when", even though taken as a whole the sentence means the exact opposite. And the differing ways that people have been using and interpreting it here shows that this is an idiom that only serves to confuse.

"If" doesn't have any links to time - if could happen today, it could happen in 20 years, it might never happen. It covers the flat tyre situation fine on its own:

"Here's how you change the tyre if we get a flat"

..which seems a little unfair to me; shouldn't you both be helping out? ;)

Re:Egos don't scale

[BobMcD]

"Here's how you change the tyre if we get a flat"

..which seems a little unfair to me; shouldn't you both be helping out? ;)

Oh, no, I might break a nail...

Re:Egos don't scale

[hedwards]

Because it doesn't happen. It's an extremely rare person that ends up the head of an organization without being a psychopath. Ever notice the behavior of CEOs? Justifying the ridiculously huge pay packages because other CEOs get it? And worse are the ones that demand it even when they're not anywhere near average. Most well adjusted people just don't want to be the head, the higher up you go past the low levels of management the worse it gets.

Re:Egos don't scale

[BrokenHalo]

Any fork would either immediately or very quickly suffer from the same fate.

People like Alan Cox and Marcelo Tosatti have maintained well-established patchsets of their own, comprised of the features they happen to think are important. This is part of the natural order of things ("managing senior programmers is like herding cats" - Dave Platt) and not to be discouraged.

Re:Egos don't scale

[DragonWriter]

"If and when..." is a common idiom in (US?) English. It's not supposed to be read literally.

Its occasionally used imprecisely to mean "if" or "when", which seem to be the not-literal readings you suggest it is "supposed" to have, but its most common use seems to be fairly literal and precise, and to mean "if [event occurs], then, when [event occurs]."

It addresses the fact that "if" alone doesn't indicate that the result is proximal in time to the trigger, and "when" alone can imply that the trigger is certain to occur.

Re:Egos don't scale

[bonch]

His dismissal of good ideas followed by later acceptance of the same ideas from pet developers is one of the reasons I lost a lot of respect for him. Credit for something is one of the few rewards for volunteer work in the open source community, and not properly attributing things can be a direct blow to people's careers as developers.

Re:Egos don't scale

[JasterBobaMereel]

Linus' Tree is *still* the official one not because of Linus, he could be replaced overnight and it would continue, it's because all the main contributors submit their patches to it, and the official kernel group analyse them before they are integrated, the all Linus actually needs to do is be the one person who actually commits patches (so there are no conflicts) and act as a final arbiter in disputes

As the final arbiter it does not matter if he is arbitary, egotistical etc ... as long as he only acts as the final arbiter, the majority rules, he just need to decide when opinion is split ...

Re:Egos don't scale

[somersault]

Maybe I should. I've just noticed that at least in programming parlance, you could really use "if" and "when" interchangeably.. in fact you can do it in normal language too, but when just seems more applicable if or when you know something is inevitable.

Re:Egos don't scale

[DragonWriter]

Actually, thinking about it logically I suppose the actual meaning of the structure does in fact simply equate to "if".

It really doesn't.

It is closer to equating simply to "when", with a specific acknowledgement that the trigger may not occur. It differs from "if" because the structure "if X then Y" says nothing about the temporal relationship between X and Y.

"When X, Y" states a temporal relationship.

"If and when X, Y" likewise states a temporal relationship but calls attention to the possibility that X may not occur. Since "When X, Y", strictly speaking, does not guarantee that X will occur, this can be viewed as strictly superfluous, but "When X, Y" is often read as implying that X will occur, so the "If and when" construct is useful to expressly state that X is uncertain while still conveying the temporal relationship between X and Y communicated by "When".
 

Re:Egos don't scale

[bonch]

What if the choice he accepts is the same thing you had suggested but submitted by one of his favored developers? Credit for work is one of the few rewards for contributing to Linux.

Re:Egos don't scale

[DragonWriter]

Then 'when' part tells you that you mean to wait for the event to happen, rather than act beforehand in anticipation of the event.

No, the "when" part tells you that you mean to act immediately when the event occurs, not wait later. The "if" part says that the response is not guaranteed if the event does not occur.

Re:Egos don't scale

[BrokenHalo]

so you can even "play Linus" and just merge only the patches that you like from the kernel mailing list into your own personal tree.

Like (I assume) other readers, I've done this for a while when the kernel was quite a lot less mature than it is now. It is one hell of a job, however, and I was very glad when my efforts became obsolete. If Linus is still happy doing what he does, then good for him.

Re:Egos don't scale

[shadowofwind]

OK, whatever. The when means 'at that time'. I could find examples where from context it means either 'not earlier' or 'not later' or both. In the present example, I think it means both, since we don't need the fork now even though Linus will disappear eventually.

Re:Egos don't scale

[Urkki]

He also said "and when" to indicate it was inevitable. This admittedly made the "if" part completely stupid.

No, not stupid. "If and when" is a shorter and nicer way of saying "when inevitably at an unpredictable time in the future". It conveys much more meaning than just plain "when".

Re:Egos don't scale

[Rysc]

You seem to be saying that "If foo, then" indicates a certain imminence of the chance of foo, whereas "If and when foo, then" indicates a less imminent chance of foo. I don't think this is necessarily true; that is, I don't think the "If" in "If and when foo" has any connotations about the imminence of the foo.

Re:Egos don't scale

[BobMcD]

Well, if foo isn't imminent, then why is it relevant?

Re:Egos don't scale

[Rysc]

If you don't want to have your charity work belittled as ego-driven then don't name your foundation after yourself. "The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation" doesn't exactly scream "Modest" or "We're only in it to help people."

Re:Egos don't scale

[maxwell demon]

* some people have clever ideas put bad way. linus is (unfortunately) too busy, to check every idea, so he skips them (sometimes), if they are not polished (enough for him)

Which sounds exactly like a scalability problem.

Re:Egos don't scale

[Anonymous Coward]

Good for him.

I'm more afraid of people who don't care about their egos than of those who do.

Re:Egos don't scale

[Anonymous Coward]

Linus is so manly his will become an immortal, he will just upload his brain on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it ;)

Re:Egos don't scale

[VolciMaster]

"I know the Queen's English. The King? He's English, too." --Dizzy Dean

Re:Egos don't scale

[wed128]

Operating system concepts were being first hashed out in the 1950s, that's only 60 years ago (at worst). So it's safe to say that the concept of an operating system hasn't yet lived longer then the average human...

Re:Egos don't scale

[GreatBunzinni]

Can you provide an example demonstrating Linus' "dismissive and insulting" behaviour, accompanied with a example of how a possible acceptance is in the form of "repackaging the idea by a different, more favoured developer"? As LKML is public, you should have no problem pointing out the threads that you based yourself to make those attacks and people like me (i.e., everyone) would be able to understand the story instead of just blindly take your word for it. After all, what exactly is there to assure us that you aren't just talking shit? A random slashdoter's word?

Re:Egos don't scale

[wed128]

+1 funny! wish i had the mod points.

Re:Egos don't scale

[Anonymous Coward]

Arrogant people who achieve power never give it up voluntarily.

Er, didn't Bill gates step down at Microsoft?

Yes, and Steve "64K is enough" Jobs had to be kicked out at Apple.

Re:Egos don't scale

[Anonymous Coward]

So the "and when" logically equates to "or when", both of which are completely pointless additions to the if, but the "and when" still somehow manages to make it sound like the speaker or writer believes that the situation is actually inevitable, something they've only just realised after saying "if".

Now, I think that stereotype of slashdot nerds not getting laid is pretty stale, but every once in awhile I come across a sad post like this and am reminded that yes, stereotypes are all too often true. Honestly who thinks or talks like that, lol, except people who couldn't get pussy to save their life in an overcrowded Animal shelter.

Re:Egos don't scale

[npsimons]

If there's anything the open source community has a surplus of, it's egos.

As compared to some other egos? At least Linus is humble for what he has achieved, and he earned it.

Re:Egos don't scale

[npsimons]

He seems to function well enough, but do not pretend he is perfect.

He may not be perfect, but he is by far the best "leader" (whether project or corporate) that I've *ever* seen. He may be insulting, but he does it to everyone to scare off the timid and to make people reconsider their ideas. He is extremely technically competent and humble, two traits which are invaluable in a technical manager. Something you may want to read: Linux Kernel Management Style.

As for taking ideas and giving them to "favored" developers: 1) at least he admits when he is wrong and 2) why do you think those developers are favored? Ideas are a dime a dozen; implementing them well (and in a way that fits in with the Linux kernel) is the hard part.

Re:Egos don't scale

[Provocateur]

What is needed is a good new fork with strong support

You need to enter into his dreams to suggest that. Oh, and watch out for that train.

Re:Egos don't scale

[Anonymous Coward]

if ($if_) { $when = true; }
if ($when) { $if_ = true; }
if ($if_ && $when) { return true; }

# better written as

if ($if_ | when ) { return true; }

PHP sucks!

Re:Egos don't scale

[icebraining]

No, it would happen the same as Xfree86: it would be forked and the work would continue.

In fact, technically every kernel developer has a fork - that's how git works. Linus' is only special because people choose to trust his as the main kernel branch, and they could as easily choose any other branch as "main".

Re:Egos don't scale

[Tubal-Cain]

Wait, he does all the committing to the kernel himself?

Kinda, yeah. Every single kernel developer (that uses git) forks from someone else, and they choose what changes from the other branches they want to merge with their own. Almost everyone pulls from Linus' branch, so everything he accepts becomes "official".

Re:Egos don't scale

[npsimons]

Interestingly, humble but smart people would end up in the same situation : they know that arrogant and power-hungry people are there and want power for the sake of their ego. I don't know if Linus is humble or arrogant, but he gave up power a long time ago when he put his OS under an open-source licence. He has never hidden the fact that he was a "benevolent dictator" (some even say the expression comes from his second surname : Benedict). If Linus is a bottleneck and slows down kernel development, there will be a fork. Right now, as much as people say he is a problem, he is still the only solution available.

I firmly believe that Linus is in the "humble but smart" camp. In the time I spent doing kernel work and on LKML, he was nothing if gregarious and insightful. Sure, he would call people idiots, but he did that to everyone, with a smirk, and generally only when they deserved it. These people that claim Linus is some Machiavellian Bill Gates or Steve Jobs clone don't know WTF they are talking about. They probably had some hare-brained idea that they posted to LKML and someone (not necessarily Linus) told them it was stupid and why it was stupid, but all they heard was the part that bruised their fragile little feelings.

What is good about open-source is that you can say to power-hungry people "Want to be the boss of a team ? Well go find a team that will respect your work !".

This is the second part most of the haters don't get, and why I firmly believe Linus is still doing a good job: people still listen to Linus and track his repo. If he was truly the asshole people make him out to be, people would stop working with him

Re:Egos don't scale

[icebraining]

75% of Linux Code Now Written By Paid Developers.

Re:Egos don't scale

[h4rr4r]

1. He would not take the money, he is rich already.
2. Alan Cox would take over or someone else on that level.

Re:Egos don't scale

[elrous0]

I didn't say that was a bad thing. Quite the contrary, doing charity work SHOULD make you feel better about yourself.

Re:Egos don't scale

[somersault]

Indeed it does. My code written in PERL.

Re:Egos don't scale

[elrous0]

It's like my grandpa used to say, "CEO's and politicians are just sociopaths with suits." Of course, grandpa also said that the jews were stealing from him in the nursing home, so take it with a grain of salt.

Re:Egos don't scale

[Anonymous Coward]

Arrogant people who achieve power never give it up voluntarily.

Er, didn't Bill gates step down at Microsoft?

Bills is still a part of the collective.


Picard was called Locutus when he was a Borg, and that's close to Linus... someone make a joke out of that.

Re:Egos don't scale

[somersault]

Who thinks like that? People who don't let their cock do their thinking for them, and have an IQ above 90.

Re:Egos don't scale

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget that the world ends in 2012.

Re:Egos don't scale

[Anonymous Coward]

most reasonable people would argue you're foolish to give up such a thing until your damn well ready.

At what point can we say that person is being arrogant for holding onto such power? If we're to go by your "until they're damn well ready", there must be a point.
There is a point when the person should step down, regardless of personal readiness.

Re:Egos don't scale

[somersault]

If and when X, Y" likewise states a temporal relationship but calls attention to the possibility that X may not occur.

In this case we are talking of "if and when certain event occurs, this will also happen". Take away either the if or when and you are still left with a temporal relationship. If can be used purely to test conditions, but in the case of something not guaranteed like this then "if", and "if and when" are equivalent.

"If and when" definitely does make it sound like the when is more guaranteed though, but in that situation I'd use something like "if, or when", "if (or when)", "if/when" etc. since these make more logical sense but also indicate that you expect some event is likely inevitable.

Re:Egos don't scale

[Kjella]

So the "and when" logically equates to "or when", both of which are completely pointless additions to the if, but the "and when" still somehow manages to make it sound like the speaker or writer believes that the situation is actually inevitable, something they've only just realised after saying "if"

It means that it's mostly conditional but with an eventual yet not dominating inevitability. For example if Linus burns out or when he dies of old age, the project will need a new leader. "If" would imply it might never happen. "when" implies everything is deterministic. "If and when" focuses on the near future while recognizing the eventual inevitability, though in a logically pure and formal sense it is then inevitable. However, it is quite normal in general conversation to use "if" and ignore that nothing lasts forever, so it is more formally correct than usual. The parent post very much reminds me of this.

Re:Egos don't scale

[Junior J. Junior III]

You miss the point of "if and when" completely. "If" might not ever be true. When implies that it certainly will, but when is not known. If is all you really need to say but "and when" adds to it the certainty that the conditional will eventually be true, at some point.

Re:Egos don't scale

[evilbessie]

Can you tell me at what point logic became part of the English language?

Re:Egos don't scale

[Just Some Guy]

Good luck with the FreeBSD kernel on Gentoo.

Gentoo runs just fine under FreeBSD. In the past, I've created a jail with nothing in it but an unpacked stage1 tarball and bootstrapped it into a fully-working Gentoo installation.

Re:Egos don't scale

[somersault]

If is all you really need to say but "and when" adds to it the certainty that the conditional will eventually be true, at some point.

If it were guaranteed to be true then you have no reason to use anything other than when. From what I've read in discussions today the "and when" is generally not taken to mean that the eventuality is guaranteed, only that the when will only take place if/when the if takes place. ie "we need a new computer right now, this one is going to break soon", "if and when the computer breaks, we'll get a new one".

Depending on how you're using when, it can be almost synonymous with if. For example "when this light turns red, it means something is wrong" instead of "if this light turns red, it means something is wrong". The when does sound slightly more like the light will turn red, but it certainly does not guarantee it. More knowledge of the situation is required to know just how likely it is to happen.

Anyway, I should maybe stop responding to these, the whole thing is getting slightly silly!

Re:Egos don't scale

[tendrousbeastie]

Well, while not an officially different set of languages, Scottish and Welsh speakers do have a somewhat different set of idioms and phrase (and basic words) than English speakers do.

Perhaps the parent just didn't feel qualified to speak about dialects he was not intimate with?

Re:Egos don't scale

[tendrousbeastie]

The petty pedant in me must point out that to the best of our knowledge the universe is in fact non-causal - Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle being what it is and all. Hard to work out the superposition state for "|if> + |when>" though

(sorry to make such a spectacularly pointless post)

Re:Egos don't scale

[VJ42]

Is that the form of English spoken in England?

Actually, it's the umbrella term for a large number of English dialects; there are actually huge differences in the way I speak (as some one who lives on the South coast) to someone in London, let alone Geordie and Scots is usually held to be literally[sic] a different language.

Re:Egos don't scale

[Junior J. Junior III]

If it were guaranteed to be true then you have no reason to use anything other than when.

"It" *could* be broken now, but if it's not, then it's a veritable certainty that it will eventually break, so we say "if and when".

N00bs who see an "if" standing alone will think to themselves, "I'll take my chances, maybe it won't happen." More experienced people throw the "and when" in there to emphasize that the less ideal branch of the conditional must be handled robustly.

It has less to do with defining the logic and more to do with emphasis on the eventual case so that it will be adequately handled.

The person who issues the "when" statement might be overstating their certainty about it, in some cases, but they do mean to imply that the conditional will at some point eventually return true. A naked "if" leaves open "maybe it never will happen" as a possibility.

Re:Egos don't scale

[somersault]

Except that I wasn't trying to "win" anything, I was just thinking out loud. My subsequent posts correlate much better with the post you linked to ;)

I'm trying to learn to not feed the trolls, though I do like discussions even on silly little things like this that nobody usually even thinks about.

Re:Egos don't scale

[somersault]

There has to be some amount of logic and reason behind the language otherwise everyone would just make stuff up as they go along. I get that a lot of rules in English are pretty arbitrary, but as you can see from the discussion here and elsewhere if you google "if and when", there isn't really one single definition for it. At worst it confuses people as to what intention someone is trying to convey, and at best it is an awkward and ugly use of the words.

Re:Egos don't scale

[tendrousbeastie]

I'm an average human, and I'm only 28.

(Thus ends a not funny joke)

Re:Egos don't scale

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone suffers from ego to some degree. Having a bit of an ego is considered healthy and normal. But the degree to which is being negatively attributed seems wholly ad homin. In fact, its likely entirely baseless and extremely hypocritical.

Re:Egos don't scale

[somersault]

It has less to do with defining the logic and more to do with emphasis on the eventual case so that it will be adequately handled.

This is in fact exactly how I interpreted it when the guy said it (as you can see from my original comment), but the guy I was replying to obviously took it differently. That's why I started thinking more in depth about the phrase and what it does or should in fact mean.

Re:Egos don't scale

[petermgreen]

remember Linus *created* a distributed version management tool (git) when he couldn't use anymore BitKeeper..
remember linus refused to use version control at all until the author of bitkeeper backed him into a corner fixing by every perceived issue until he ran out of excuses.

A DVCS actually makes it easier for a head honcho to retain complete control of the main tree. With a traditional vcs you pretty much have to let major developers commit directly to the main repositry or manually manage patches from them like you would if you weren't using a vcs at all. With a DVCS you can pull in commits while keeping thier history.

Re:Egos don't scale

[sjames]

There have already been several forks that remained (and remain) quite friendly. There are a number of trees you can check out and build in addition to the official Linus kernel. You are free to set up your own tree and pick and choose the patches you want from LKML. They all pass through there, it's not like Linus gets his patches hand delivered by mercenaries to a secret bunker somewhere.

Most of the forks have been to test specific ideas that may or may not pan out or to give larger revisions a place to be worked over while they render the code too unstable for the main development line.

Every few releases code is branched for an extended period for a version that gets only bug fixes back-ported.

Re:Egos don't scale

[MichaelSmith]

Commit it to git, surely.

Re:Egos don't scale

[MichaelSmith]

remember Linus *created* a distributed version management tool (git) when he couldn't use anymore BitKeeper..
remember linus refused to use version control at all until the author of bitkeeper backed him into a corner fixing by every perceived issue until he ran out of excuses.

A DVCS actually makes it easier for a head honcho to retain complete control of the main tree. With a traditional vcs you pretty much have to let major developers commit directly to the main repositry or manually manage patches from them like you would if you weren't using a vcs at all. With a DVCS you can pull in commits while keeping thier history.

Ah but if Linus controlled the entire history because it was in his cvs repository he could sack anybody from the project and all they would have is a clone. Linus doesn't even need to give everybody read access, he owns the copyright. DVCS makes the history distributed in a meaningful way.

And for what it is worth I think the copyright is the main risk in the "Linus going under a bus" scenario. What if his heirs decide to cash in on the name, and the copyright on his code?

Re:Egos don't scale

[antirelic]

Isn't that the way of the left? If your successful, you only did so through treachery. You are evil because you do not give to the poor. If you give to the poor, you do so only for your ego. If you give it all away and become destitute your a pathetic fool. If you try to succeed and fail, your a joke and a loser worthy of ridicule.

This loathing of success is so pervasive, it even spreads even to those who are successful in providing a product "free to everyone". Only because that one person has set himself apart.

Everyone who keeps on bashing at Linus and the other "ego's" are just pissed off because their success somehow shows your the haters ineptitude. Of course, its only in your head and in your heart.

Re:Egos don't scale

[SnowZero]

Commit rights can often end up as political lightning rods such as with XFree86.

I'll take "pull from whoever you trust" over "cabal of the chosen few" any day.

Re:Egos don't scale

[Richard Steiner]

No, the percentage of volunteer coders is not what it once was. I will add a couple of links to the one the other poster contributed:

Who wrote 2.6.20? (Feb 2007)

The Linux Foundation details who contributes to Linux development

Besides, I've run into some pretty big egos in the corporate IT world over the past 22 years, some of them well-justified (IMO), and I've also known more than a few open source contributors who were simply fixing issues or scratching itches and who don't care about getting credit. The end goal was to write, fix, or improve something they're using.

Pieces of software are tools. Some folks just like sharpening tools. :-)

Re:Egos don't scale

[Anonymous Coward]

He's a Finn, you should have made that a polar bear.

Re:Egos don't scale

[Squiggle]

Which is why we need not worry about Linus because he certainly doesn't fit the psychopathic CEO mold. One of the beautiful properties about free software is that it allows people to do the work they really enjoy while attaining more power through the trust and reputation they generate for doing good work, without moving "up" into positions with assumed trust and reputation (CEO, etc) that are the goals of the untrustworthy psychopaths.

Re:Egos don't scale

[lsatenstein]

Why don't negative people go home and put their heads in the sand. Linus delegates responsiblity and there are enough second in line persons who could stand-in. Linus is a team player. Teams don't fall apart if the leader takes a vacation.

Re:Egos don't scale

[Anonymous Coward]

And wasn't the developer he shat on regarding schedulers generally missing and action and unable to provide the data to suggest his idea was better, and it took a different developer to actually do the work to prove out the change, and then Linus accepted it?

I'm sorry but talk is cheap, the ones that actually do the work are the ones that get listened to. This is as true in the corporate world as it is in open source.

Re:Egos don't scale

[micheas]

No, it would happen the same as Xfree86: it would be forked and the work would continue.

In fact, technically every kernel developer has a fork - that's how git works. Linus' is only special because people choose to trust his as the main kernel branch, and they could as easily choose any other branch as "main".

No Linus' tree is special because it is sprinkled with holy penguin pee, (at least according to Linux).

The only travesty is if he doesn't pass on the holy penguin pee.

What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit By A Bus?

[psergiu]

"What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit By A Bus?" - An Empirical Study
by Leonard Richardson

Published on segfault.org 02/23/2000

http://www.crummy.com/writing/segfault.org/Bus.html

It even coined the "Bus factor" phrase:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor

Re:What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit By A Bus?

[js3]

I don't think Linux will die without Linus, but as long as he's there, he'll be the cock-block until he gets run over by a bus

Re:What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit By A Bus?

[thegarbz]

The problem is not if it will die. Linux itself will likely live on. The question lies in what will ultimately happen to it. There needs to be a succession path, even if it's just that Linus keeps 100% of the control while he's on work, and passes it off only when he gets burnt out or worse.

Supposing he does get hit by a bus, there will be months of infighting as big egos clash trying to decide who gets control of the kernel. There'll be those who think the official repository should be managed by committee, those saying the single person structure maintained. The subsequent fight will blow out of proportion which will generate many forks and ultimately and dangerously you will end up with uncertainty.

The best outcome is that there's a plan in place for exactly this kind of situation. That way Linux can remain what Linus wants it's to be in case of his demise rather than to throw it to the dogs and then see what's left over after the frenzy dies.

Re:What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit By A Bus?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is great! I can't believe I never ran across this before.

Re:What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit By A Bus?

[Demonantis]

I fixed the wiki article to better represent the reference it had. You can thank me latter.

Re:What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit By A Bus?

[swillden]

It even coined the "Bus factor" phrase:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor

That article didn't coin the phrase. I don't know where it originated, but I remember hearing and using it in the mid-90s.

Re:What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit By A Bus?

[Anonymous Coward]

Andrew Morton.

Re:What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit By A Bus?

[mewsenews]

Supposing he does get hit by a bus, there will be months of infighting as big egos clash trying to decide who gets control of the kernel.

Respectfully, this isn't what I see happening. Linus seems to be a nose-to-the-grindstone pragmatist and the only person who hopes to succeed him will not arrive through politics. The currently official kernel organization might collapse in bickering if Linus gets hit by a bus, but the true workers will quickly find someone like Linus to quietly organize their efforts and it will be quickly apparent where the actual development is happening.

In fact, the official kernel already has leaders like Greg Kroah-Hartman that perform jobs similar to Linus' current role and could pick up almost seamlessly if Linus vanishes. This is such a non-story

Re:What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit By A Bus?

[Rysc]

In fact, the official kernel already has leaders like Greg Kroah-Hartman that perform jobs similar to Linus' current role and could pick up almost seamlessly if Linus vanishes. This is such a non-story

QFT.

Nothing to see here, you can go about your business, move along.

Re:What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit By A Bus?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, it'll give HURD a chance to catch up!

Re:What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit By A Bus?

[200_success]

Then it would be a Bus Error.

Re:What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit By A Bus?

[Anonymous Coward]

The best outcome is that there's a plan in place for exactly this kind of situation.

Also, there should be a secret bat-cave where Linus can shelter from the destructive patent wars.

Re:What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit By A Bus?

[Anonymous Coward]

"What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit By A Bus?" - An Empirical Study
by Leonard Richardson

Published on segfault.org 02/23/2000

http://www.crummy.com/writing/segfault.org/Bus.html

It even coined the "Bus factor" phrase:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor

And, in other news, Steve Ballmer was earlier seen buying shares in Greyhound.

Re:What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit By A Bus?

[Nesman64]

It depends on if Bill was driving or if Steve threw it.

Re:What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit By A Bus?

[thegarbz]

While I respectfully agree with your decision I'm sure there are others who don't which will likely create problems at crunch time. A lot of people will remain quiet about this until the position is up for grabs. All of this can simply be prevented if a succession line is formalised with Greg Kroah-Hartman at the top.

Regardless of what may happen afterwards, this is the kind of event to plan for.

Re:What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit By A Bus?

[shentino]

Thankfully, since it's under GPLv2, there won't be any estate lawyers to fight with if he passes on.

I predict that the FSF will take up the role to be honest. He suggested as much in a message to the list.

and what

[segin]

Linux is Linus's creation, he should have ultimate commit decision power

Re:and what

[Anonymous Coward]

just because he started a open-source project does not mean he owns it. It's like the stock market, as soon as the comited patches dwarf your original work, you are not the dominant share holder.

Re:and what

[Aladrin]

It's his project, no matter the contributions of others. Anyone is free to fork it. They are not free to take the actual project from him.

He is free to run it as a dictatorship or a democracy. It's his project.

Re:and what

[turbidostato]

"just because he started a open-source project does not mean he owns it."

To all practical purposes he does own his tree. And due to the GPL license that's no problem at all: you can own your own tree as soon as you want and be as zelous or as liberal as you want with it.

Re:and what

[dangitman]

And due to the GPL license that's no problem at all: you can own your own tree as soon as you want and be as zelous or as liberal as you want with it.

No, you can't. The GPL places limits on both liberalness and zealotry.

The license prohibits liberalness, because you are only allowed to share source code under strict conditions. It prohibits zealotry, because it ensures that others are free to fork a project and not bow to your vision of a project.

Re:and what

[interval1066]

"The license prohibits liberalness, because you are only allowed to share source code under strict conditions. It prohibits zealotry, because it ensures that others are free to fork a project and not bow to your vision of a project."

Never the less he and he alone maintains the reference kernel source. That's a potential problem. Or- explain to me why it isn't.

Re:and what

[steveb3210]

The license prohibits liberalness, because you are only allowed to share source code under strict conditions.

What in the hell are you talking about? The GPL restricts your ability to share binary-only versions of your tree. It explicitly requires you to *always* share your source code when you are making a public release. There are no limitations at all.

Re:and what

[amorsen]

Never the less he and he alone maintains the reference kernel source. That's a potential problem. Or- explain to me why it isn't.

It is only the reference insofar that distributions tend to work off of it. It would be just as easy for them technically to use a random other git tree as the reference, if they chose to do so. However, Linus is doing such a good job these days that non-enterprise distributions just stick with his sources + a limited set of patches. If he stops doing a good job (like in the hit-by-bus scenario which seems so popular), there are several well-maintained trees to pick from, and Linux would only be a little worse off.

The most important advantage of Linus is that his decisions are almost universally respected. It would be difficult even for David Miller and Alan Cox to get the same universal buy-in, and Andrew Morton is possibly too nice for the job.

Re:and what

[maxwell demon]

No, you can't. The GPL places limits on both liberalness and zealotry.

Well, he certainly can't accept code with a license that violates the GPL (strictly speaking, even that is not true; he'd just have to relicense Linux and remove all code from people not willing to have their code relicensed accordingly). But other than that, he's completely free in what he accepts in the tree and what he rejects.

It is of course also true that others will react on his decisions, and therefore the decisions may make his Linux tree obsolete. But that doesn't mean he can't do it. It only means that he will have to live with the consequences. Also note that this is not specific to Linux or the GPL. It would also be true for a proprietary product, provided it doesn't have a monopoly: If the vendor makes decisions the users don't agree with, the users will just switch to another vendor, and if the developers are not content with how the development is handled, most of them will try hard to find a job in another company.

Re:and what

[dangitman]

The GPL restricts your ability to share binary-only versions of your tree. It explicitly requires you to *always* share your source code when you are making a public release.

Exactly. It limits liberalism, because it forces you to share source code.

There are no limitations at all.

You just quoted one - you MUST share source code. That's a limitation, a restriction on freedom.

Re:and what

[steveb3210]

"Exactly. It limits liberalism, because it forces you to share source code."

Your original quote was ""you are only allowed to share source code under strict conditions"" which is *completely* different from the point you're now making.

Secondly, you'll note that you have fewer rights without the GPL then with it. Namely, you have no rights whatsoever. GPL code is still copyrighted code. Do you think you should just be able to steal other peoples work?

Re:and what

[dangitman]

Your original quote was ""you are only allowed to share source code under strict conditions"" which is *completely* different from the point you're now making.

How so? It's exactly the same point. It forces you to share source code, and attaches strict conditions to that sharing.

Secondly, you'll note that you have fewer rights without the GPL then with it.

How so? Under a BSD license, I'm not forced to share source code, so I have more freedom to develop software on my own terms.

GPL code is still copyrighted code. Do you think you should just be able to steal other peoples work?

This doesn't make any sense whatsoever, as there are other licenses that allow more freedom than the GPL, yet are still copyrighted code. Using a different license than the GPL is not "stealing."

Re:and what

[turbidostato]

"The license prohibits liberalness, because you are only allowed to share source code under strict conditions."

So strict indeed that all can be said as in "if you want to share this code do it in the very same conditions it were shared to you". Don't find that so strict. If you find that to be unbearable strict you are absolutly free not to use the code.

"It prohibits zealotry, because it ensures that others are free to fork a project and not bow to your vision of a project."

For this to happen you at least have to share it. But you don't have to: if you want your copy to be only for you, you can.

Don't like the current kernel development process?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut up and fork off.

Branch out

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a licensing term that prevents someone else from starting a normal OSS project out of this?

Re:Branch out

[Anonymous Coward]

No.

People have made special purpose kernel forks, but they never get enough momentum behind them to be any kind of rival, simply because there isn't any genuine need for a rival.

Re:Branch out

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

No. The kernel is(at this point, whether anybody likes it or not) basically GPL2 permanently. Without any "copyright assignment" requirement to some organization, there are just too many interlocking owners for any re-licensing.

Already, most distros maintain slightly forked versions of the kernel, to suit their needs(ie. enterprise-ish ones like RedHat might do more driver backports, MontaVista introduces BSPs for a variety of oddball boards, etc.) Because novelty costs money, people don't generally go further from mainline than they have a good justification for; but there are already dozens of quiet, not-very-adversarial, slight forks floating around, mostly in the hands of the various distros, and some of the embedded engineering houses.

Re:Branch out

[turbidostato]

"No. The kernel is(at this point, whether anybody likes it or not) basically GPL2 permanently. Without any "copyright assignment" requirement to some organization, there are just too many interlocking owners for any re-licensing."

Linus Torvalds don't see that problem. Kernel is not moving from GPLv2 just because he doesn't want to. The day Linus wants to move to GPLv3 (if) he will just do so together with a public anouncement of the change. Whoever finds entitled ownership to a piece of code will be free to ask his commits out of the tree if he feel not wanting the change and that's all.

Re:Branch out

[gknoy]

The kernel is(at this point, whether anybody likes it or not) basically GPL2 permanently. Without any "copyright assignment" requirement to some organization, there are just too many interlocking owners for any re-licensing.

I wonder how feasible it would be to ask people to voluntarily reassign their copyrights to some entity, so that the kernel (or their parts?) could be updated to GPL3. Can parts of the work even be licensed in separate ways like that?

Re:Branch out

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Anybody would be perfectly free to chase down a contributor and ask them to offer their contribution under different terms(or buy it from them and offer it themselves). The issue is just that there are a lot of contributors, including some who may be virtually impossible to get ahold of(releases under GPL2, dies, copyright is still owned by estate, who could sue your ass; but estate doesn't even know that the copyright exists, until mony-grubbing grandson graduates from law school and goes hunting, or any number of other horror stories, in addition to the entities that are perfectly easy to find; but just don't want to.)

For maximum practicality, you'd probably want to go after contributors(in order of importance) and ask for a change from "GPL2" to "GPL2 or later"(so that you don't break compatibility with "GPL2" components; but could, in the future, build a GPL3+ one). My understanding is that you would almost certainly encounter people very much not interested in doing that, so it would mean a lot of legwork, possibly a bit of cash, and some re-writing of obstinate portions; but there is no binding constraint.

It would be merely unfeasibly annoying, not impossible.

Re:Branch out

[CyprusBlue113]

I'm afraid that is not how copyright law works.

Re:Branch out

[gmack]

Not feasible in the Linux kernel case because some people who have contributed a lot of the work have died so their code would have to be replaced before any GPL3 relicensing.

Re:Branch out

[inKubus]

Exactly. And what they have in linux.org is a way to keep the entire thing from exploding on every new bleeding edge thing people want to add. Like what Google is trying to do with the Android pieces. Hack the kernel so it works in a phone setting, that's a fork. Want to commit it back? It should be something valid for all linux uses. So they used wait locks instead of writing a hook or something, because it was easier. Linux.org says "no, do the work so it actually contributes something to the rest of the project and we'll commit your changes."

Google has a big collective ego though, so if there was a major fork that became adversarial, it would probably come from them. I'm sure they have their own kernels for their various node types anyway, I mean, why wouldn't you. Who needs SCSI and audio drivers for a bigtable node? And they have the ability to publish or sell a kernel to a wide audience, argueably bigger than RedHat can.. But it would be a shame, because Linus is really the reason linux is stable, compatible, and the whole ecosystem works. You get a few layers below the kernel and it gets to be a chaotic mess. If there wasn't SOMEONE without a major commercial interest, without an agenda--other than adhering to the original spirit of the project--the kernel would fragment, compatibility would suffer, and everyone would have to make custom kernels for specific applications. That would be bad. In the words of Dr. Dre, "Slow is better. Trust me."

Re:Branch out

[makomk]

Don't forget that various of the developers are deliberately licensing their new code as GPL2 only because they dislike the GPL 3 so much. All it would take to make the problem more manageable is Linus refusing to accept new code that's GPL 2 only unless there's a good reason for it, but he won't because he likes the status quo.

Re:Branch out

[turbidostato]

"I'm afraid that is not how copyright law works."

Maybe you are right but:
a) There are judges if the case arises
b) That already happened and that was the way Linus Torvalds dealt with it (when he moved the kernel to the GPL license).

food

[StripedCow]

...and still has fire in his belly

Perhaps he should eat less Mexican food.

whiner

[Fujisawa Sensei]

Sounds to me like a blogger whining.

Re:whiner

[bsDaemon]

Isn't that what blogging is for?

Re:whiner

[thegarbz]

The things about whining bloggers is there's a lot of them, and eventually one of them raises an important point. So if Linus dies tomorrow, just what will happen? Will the official kernel be run by committee? Will it be managed by the alpha dick from the ensuing ego battle for the top job? Will the community be fundamentally fractured losing the official repository?

Re:whiner

[s.d.]

Do you even know who Jonathan Corbet is? Among other things, he created LWN.net, has been a Linux kernel contributor for longer than that, and has written books on Linux kernel development (for example, the O'Reilly "Linux Device Drivers" book).

He's been on the inside for a long time. This is an opinion you should at least respect, even if in the end you disagree.

Re:whiner

[bsDaemon]

No, I don't know who he is, nor do I actually care. I'm not a Linux user. However, my post was directed at blogs in general, not this guy in particular.

Re:whiner

[Dan Ost]

Who cares? If Linus stops updating his repository tomorrow, we'll all just switch to whatever repository meets our needs.

It's only consensus that says that Linus' repository is the "official" one.

There are already plenty of people who track Andrew Morton's repository instead of Linus', so if Linus went away, it's not like we don't already have a tested mechanism to allow us to track "unofficial" repositories.

Re:whiner

[Lifyre]

Could be that he doesn't want that access but wants to know who his new boss will be when the old boss is no longer viable.

Having that kind of core stability is one of the aspects that has allowed linux to bloom in recent years.

It seems to me we're seeing a large amount of progress because of a stable base surrounded by competitive user space projects.

You are welcome to start your own fork any time.

[AbbeyRoad]

The Linux kernel is not a company. Free software projects are a new kind of entity.

The debate is still open about whether it is correct to level "They should..." instructions at this kind of entity.

Possibly "I should..." statements are more appropriate.

-paul

Re:Linus needs an inner circle

[JamesP]

It's called Andrew Morton

HURD will be finished any day^H^H^Hdecade!

[Anonymous Coward]

That will solve this problem once and for all.

Brain in a Jar Time

[lysdexia]

PREPARE THE ELECTRODES!

development? what linux developmwnt?

[petes_PoV]

We've been on 2.6.X since 2003. Somebody needs to pull the cork out ...

Re:development? what linux developmwnt?

[Lifyre]

Seriously where is 3.0? Everyone knows it is only progress when the first number gets bigger. Like the number of g's for cell phones.

Re:development? what linux developmwnt?

[Darth Sdlavrot]

Like the number of g's for cell phones.

They should stop, because I already have an 11G phone.

Re:development? what linux developmwnt?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but seven of those Gs are compactified on a Calabi-Yau manifold.

Re:development? what linux developmwnt?

[Anonymous Coward]

...or like the number of blades on my razor. My razor has so many blades now and is so fat that it can no longer follow the contours of my face. Why, just this morning I accidentally sliced off my entire lower jaw!

Re:development? what linux developmwnt?

[maxwell demon]

Ah, now I understand why we don't get mobile phone contracts with no strings attached!

Re:development? what linux developmwnt?

[h4rm0ny]

You're not kidding. In the United Arab Emirates, some clever marketoids are selling MP5 players. I've tried explaining to someone from there that what they actually own is an MP3 player, but I made limited progress. They just kept insisting "no - it's an MP5 player".

Re:development? what linux developmwnt?

[Anonymous Coward]

But these go to eleven!

W

Benjamin Linus was scalable?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean all this time while on the island Benjamin Linus was able to do more things than he led on? Who knew. ;)

in the long run---

[Anonymous Coward]

we're all dead. -John Maynard Keynes

He's what, 40-something? (Nope, can't be bothered to look it up. Go ahead, mod me down for it.)

Average life expectancy in the US is 78 years.

You do the math.

Or maybe he gets tired of it all sooner. Someone else already mentioned getting hit by a bus, which is kinda gruesome.

I know the feeling

[Chrisq]

Linus 'has had lots of practice and still has fire in his belly.

He should really lay off the vindaloos

Good thing I read the summary

[erroneus]

Here I was thinking that this was some article about whether or not Linus Torvalds should or could have children.

Re:Good thing I read the summary

[rubycodez]

er, are you implying the three he has now have the mailman's eyes....???

Re:Good thing I read the summary

[Tjebbe]

Perhaps on a related note, I was thinking that while Linus has obviously scaled vertically to his full extent, there is still plenty of room for him to scale horizontally.

Linuxinsider

[Airline_Sickness_Bag]

Anything from Linuxinsider I would take with a healty dose of skepticism - it's better known for their anti linux shills.

Re:Linuxinsider

[Anonymous Coward]

I suggest you read up on the "linux insider" and their writings on the great fiaSCO. Slam-dunk victory for SCO they claimed, last time I heard anything from them.

Re:Linuxinsider

[rhizome]

If anyone doesn't like anything you like, they must be retarded or shills.

Thank you for your input, Maureen O'Gara.

Open Source Fail

[he-sk]

The failure in the argument is to assume that Linus' kernel is in any way "official". Distribution maintainers don't think that way at all.

Re:Open Source Fail

[NotBorg]

While distributions may pack kernels which are different than Linus', pretty much all the development still happens in and around the Linus tree. Look at how distro kernels typically differ from "official":
  1. Backports of patches from newer kernels to older kernels.
  2. Patches that haven't made it into the official tree but are working toward that end.
  3. Patches that won't make it into the official tree, but are continuously maintained to work with the official tree. (There are a few notables in this category but they are relatively few.)
  4. Patches that are intended to be temporary solutions until further development happens in the official.

All these options involve the Linus tree (current or past) in an integral way.

If distributions are:
    1. copying from a Linus' tree,
    2. adapting to a Linus' tree, and
    3. trying to push to Linus' tree
then tell me how distribution maintainers don't think of Linus' tree as relatively official when practically everything they do revolves around the upstream.

Nobody calls a distribution's kernel a fork and I really don't think distribution maintainers think of it as one either.

We always knew this would happen some day

[Bobtree]

Linus is monolithic.

Yeah, fork it!

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't think of anything that will do more damage than to further fragment it.

If you use more than a couple distributions of Linux you know exactly what I'm talking about.

There's something wrong...

[Anonymous Coward]

with a development model that comes crashing down if the wrong person gets hit by a bus...

Re:There's something wrong...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, they should certainly switch to a distributed workflow.

Lack of planning: need clones

[Anonymous Coward]

See, this is why they should have invested in cloning technology years ago! By now you might have multiple Linuses working in parallel or alternating week by week or day by day.

Hmmm... although I suppose there could be a significant amount of overhead due to debate among them about the scheduler.

Well

[Josh04]

Another year of Linus on the Desktop.

Re:Sigh.

[somersault]

Heh. I kind of like the completely random asides you get on Slashdot. It's like the Simpsons, start on one plot for a couple of minutes and then swing on a wild tangent. At least that's what I remember it always doing.

English moan

[Anonymous Coward]

"Share the responsibility for something" means "to be (partly) responsible for". When I first read the phrase "it may be time for Linus Torvalds to share more of the responsibility for Linux", I thought people were suggesting he should take on MORE responsibility, not less. Parser failure, I guess!

haiku

[Anonymous Coward]

haiku will probably be at version 1 after 9 years development (joke/sarcasm intended) so if Linux takes a dive I will probably jump over to haiku or a BSD flavor.

Re:You are welcome to start your own fork any time

[Blakey Rat]

It's also possible to found your own nation every time you disagree with a new US law. But it's certainly not realistic or practical to do so.

Can you spell....

[3seas]

Open source?

Uninformed submission.

[Seth Kriticos]

Linus is at the top now because he does a very good job and people trust him. The actual development is done by thousands of developers (around 3000 contributors / release currently), number increasing. It sales just fine.

The way he is accomplishing this, is by using a network of trust (he talk about it in his talk about git).

This is very scalable, as he is not actually checking out every peace of code, he just merges them.

What would happen if he would suddenly go crazy or hit by a bus? The answer is simple: one of the core maintainers, like for instance Andrew Morton would take over the position. General development would continue as it is now, as Linus talked often about how and why he runs things the way he does, and many people agree with him there.

One failure point is bad

[jonfr]

It is a really bad for any development that it is just one person that controls all the patches and the framework of the linux kernel. The main risk being that it might all come to a halt one day because of a accident or sickness of Linus.

It is also clear that one-person aspect also slows down the development, and allows for less creativity solutions to problems and results in regards to development of Linux.

There are many good reasons to have more people accept patches into the linux tree. One person is just problem waiting to happen (and it already has according to the news in question).

Re:One failure point is bad

[natehoy]

Yes, it is really bad. But, fortunately, the Linux maintenance group isn't all THAT bad. Torvalds is certainly "front and center" but he's not the only one aware of what is going on, and there's an "inner circle" that is comprised of people who are very aware of the model that has been established and would probably work cooperatively to keep the core Linux kernel working largely as it does today.

Yes, there are going to be people who will opportunistically fork off their own version and try to make Mikenix, Joenix, Franknix, etc. If a sufficient number of the core developers follow that fork, then that fork will be where most people will want to get their code.

Assuming the entire "inner circle" all walked into a dark corridor and were all simultaneously eaten by grues, there would probably be some chaos. Development might get a little stuttery for a while. But in a pretty short time someone (or some group) will step in and fill the gap.

But, don't forget, the code is out there. It's not going away. There's no shortage of people who just want the chance to contribute to it. In general, FOSS development is an (admittedly imperfect) meritocracy.

Someone will prove that he or she is "The One" and after a little shuffling and snuffling the majority will align, because most people understand that the most efficient Linux is where everyone contributes to one central effort. You'll have some forks (hell, there are plenty of them out there today!), but none will be fatal to the future of Linux. It's too useful to too many.

"If I fall, another will take my place. And another, and another..."
  - Delenn, "Comes the Inquisitor"

Re:One failure point is bad

[Zero__Kelvin]

"It is a really bad for any development that it is just one person that controls all the patches and the framework of the linux kernel. "

Well it is a damn good thing that nothing could be further from the truth then! You can read the whole article, but here is one important excerpt that proves that it is not the case:

So I don't think such project forks are bad at all, it's how a lot of development is done. Obviously, most development is about "micro-forks" and people don't even think of them as real forks at all, but I actually think it's good to encourage experimentation - and by keeping it friendly, if some experimental kernel shows that it was actually the right direction, we don't end up having psychological road-blocks to switching over or to merging the code...

May the best code win.

Linus? Arrogant? WTF!!???

[Zero__Kelvin]

"Arrogant people who achieve power never give it up voluntarily. "

Hopefully you will be modded "off topic", since Linus is famous for his self-deprecating humour and general lack of arrogance. He is well known for calling stupid ideas stupid, but it isn't arrogance if you are correct most of time. Nobody who really gets software would disagree that Linus is usually the one with a clue in any such debate.

Re:Sigh.

[Clandestine_Blaze]

These random asides on Slashdot sometimes remind me of reading a Wikipedia article, and then getting distracted by one of the links, and then that link spawns another ten more links, and so on.

Not that I'm complaining, :-)

Re:You are welcome to start your own fork any time

[maxwell demon]

It's also possible to found your own nation every time you disagree with a new US law.

And where would I found it? AFAIK all known land is already owned by some existing nation.

Re:You are welcome to start your own fork any time

[npsimons]

Possibly "I should..." statements are more appropriate.

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! This is what we open sourcers have been saying for *years*. To those who kneejerkily say "I don't have the time" or "I don't have the skills", well, sorry. You can pay someone else (ala Microsoft or Apple), or pay a consultant to mod Linux and other open source software to your needs. Either way, you're paying your time or your money; TANSTAAFL.

Or?

[ThatsNotPudding]

dies of a Mono infection.

Re:Sigh.

[david_thornley]

Following Wikipedia article links reminds me of TV Tropes. (URL omitted to protect the still sane.)

Robert Pogson Blog

[ciatog]

Just including a link to Robert Pogson's blog since none was provided in the article: http://pogson.6k.ca/

Re:You are welcome to start your own fork any time

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG! What was that bright light? I'm blinded! My mind is blown! It was fireball of pure common sense!

It's as if 1,000,000 voices bitching "Linux needs to do this, this, and this to succeed on the desktop!" were suddenly silenced!

Not really an issue...

[TemporalBeing]

Katherine Noyes writes at LinuxInsider that it may be time for Linus Torvalds to share more of the responsibility for Linux that he's been shouldering. 'If Linux wants to keep up with the competition there is much work to do, more than even a man of Linus's skill [can] accomplish,' argues one user. The 'scalability of Linus' is the subject of a post by Jonathan Corbet wondering if there might there be a Linus scalability crunch point coming. 'The Linux kernel development process stands out in a number of ways; one of those is the fact that there is exactly one person who can commit code to the "official" repository,' Corbet writes.

The problem with this is that there are a lot of people in a structured hierarchy around Linus. He maintains the very top of the hierarchy as "Supreme Dictator" and (i) uses his tools (e.g. git) and (ii) the hierarchy underneath him to manage it all.

A problem with that scenario is the potential for repeats of what Corbet calls 'the famous "Linus burnout" episode of 1998' when everything stopped for a while until Linus rested a bit, came back, and started merging patches again. 'If Linus is to retain his central position in Linux kernel development, the community as a whole needs to ensure that the process scales and does not overwhelm him,' Corbet adds. But many don't agree. 'Don't be fooled that Linus has to scale — he has to work hard, but he is the team captain and doorman. He has thousands doing most of the work for him. He just has to open the door at the appropriate moment,' writes Robert Pogson, adding that Linus 'has had lots of practice and still has fire in his belly.'"

After that 1998 experience, he learned the lesson and setup the hierarchy. After nearly having a similar experience during the 2.4/2.5 series development he wised up some more and expanded the hierarchy even further.

Linus might be the only one that can commit to his official branch of the tree, but it is one of many - all of which he draws from as the patches make their way up the hierarchy. Want to change a device? Submit the patch to the appropriate sub-tree, and wait for it to filter up to Linus. Any outside party cannot submit directly to Linus any more - it must go through his Lieutenants first, and their Lieutenants before them. All of this keeps the level of work that any one person does to a rather reasonable level so no one necessarily gets burned out - other than for politics.

Sure, Linus may go away some day; but there are probably enough people that have administrative permissions to his tree to be able to hand it off to someone else as well if he wasn't able to before he left (e.g. Bus Factor). Even then, there are several parallel trees (e.g. -mm) that are of equal quality run by one of the Lieutenants.

Linux was a derivative of UNIX

[Anonymous Coward]

Geez, Linux is not some revolutionary, unique software. It copies from other systems and OSes. As long as we know what and where, we can figure out why and how.

As for Linus: not scalable. He needs a break. and do you all really know he's the only one that commits? Really? It's just a git account, i.e. Linus could still be committing in 2310, if he gave someone his password of course... Conspiracies, conspiracies....

Re:Linux was a derivative of UNIX

[Wuhao]

Geez, Linux is not some revolutionary, unique software. It copies from other systems and OSes. As long as we know what and where, we can figure out why and how.

As for Linus: not scalable. He needs a break. and do you all really know he's the only one that commits? Really? It's just a git account, i.e. Linus could still be committing in 2310, if he gave someone his password of course... Conspiracies, conspiracies....

Come on, Darl, let it go. It's time to move on.

Why does everybody have to venture an opinion?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just don't get that. It's not our job to venture an opinion on the organization of a project we only understand as outsiders, as fans, as skeptics or contributors. Whatever our position, it isn't Linus' position, or point of view. Linus would probably say that in the end the project has a life of its own and that any change in name, direction, and leadership that happens will inevitably be made by the community, on the basis of some actual need, and not on the basis of some sky-falling, or non-sky-falling hypothetical blather. Anyways, since everybody is venturing an opinion I'll venture mine; Nothing to see here, nothing interesting. Blah blah blah.

W

How stay on top.

[neurophys]

It is touched at above and you touch the issue: As long as you move faster than the others, people follow. When you slow down, people find others to follow. This is also true in commercial business - when companies start using lawers instead of developers they have lost.
As long as Linus seems to keep up the steam, the rest follows, when he slows down, people will follow others. The bus-factor? There are clever people around who will be followed. Some will fight to take over Linus' position. If they get close to it, the development is already somewhere else.

anonymous coward

[Anonymous Coward]

jews tryihg so hard to control Linux.
as they control everything else.

Linus Torvalds == Steve Jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

Linus like Steve, Steve like Linus. Unmistakably brilliant single points of failure we all at ./ couldn't be without.
Geniuses, Leonardos of our era, after all. Very much unlike Bill Gates.

I wish this thread will not get lost in the ether in 20 or 30 years, I wish this to be remembered.
Then we will look with nostalgia and some tear at those past times when a couple of brave men could still manage to make and hold the future alone for us, with their hands.

Who the fuck is Jonathan Corbet

[Fizzl]

...And why should I care?

Get the latest sources and start maintaining your own tree if you think you can do better job at it.
This piece of random speculation is useless and irritating.

Clueless twat

[Fizzl]

If Linux wants to keep up with the competition there is much work to do

Eh? What competition? There's much competition OS kernel market?

Ah yes, HURD is a almost nibbling at Linux' ankles! Hurry Linus! Merge faster or Stallman will take your place!
Look, Jonathan -- Genius' do what they do and don't give a shit about anyones opinions. Just shut the hell up and get off the inttarwebs, you are embarrassing yourself.

The giant is not big enough!

[Rogerborg]

Screeched the pygmies.

How?! Re:What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit By A Bus?

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I've read about how he spends his days, the amount of time available for him to be hit by a bus is comparatively low. He spends much of his days indoors or in other 'out of the buses way' type areas. I think it would have to be a pretty spectacular bus accident for it to take out Linus. I'm not saying Ballmer couldn't arrange such a thing. It just might be a rather obvious ploy.