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Linus Torvalds Says Linux Can Move On Without Him
pacopico writes: In a typically blunt interview, Linus Torvalds has said for the first time that if he were to die, Linux could safely continue on its own. Bloomberg has the report, which includes a video with Torvalds at his home office. Torvalds insists that people like Greg Kroah-Hartman have taken over huge parts of the day-to-day work maintaining Linux and that they've built up enough trust to be respected. This all comes as Torvalds has been irking more and more people with his aggressive attitude. The line between "blunt" and "aggressive" is one that you probably get to skirt a lot, when you (in the words of the Bloomberg reporter) "may be the most influential individual economic force of the past 20 years."
You mean the butthurt from the poetterix crew for getting flak for their own poor attitude, crap code, and generally poor disposition?
I think we need Linus a bit more to keep a lid on these... less than stellarly performing artifacts sticking in the community's craw.
You get to be a leader by getting people to follow you. Bluster and bullying works for some, others actually pull it off by being nice (not the same as trying to please everyone!). Others still lead quietly by example. And what works for some will put off others. Of course, it helps to be right often; if you are, you don't have to give people shit to make them follow, but they'll still follow if you do. That is what Jobs and Torvalds had/have going for them.
The one disadvantage about quiet leadership is that you will much less talked and written about. Or maybe that's an advantage...
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
When Linus has been piped into the great dev-null in the sky, I for one will welcome Lennart Poettering as the new Emperor of Linux. We'll call it Lenux!
What, too early to start a flame war?
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
“The best leaders are those their people hardly know exist.
The next best is a leader who is loved and praised.
Next comes the one who is feared.
The worst one is the leader that is despised
The best leaders value their words, and use them sparingly.
When they have accomplished their task,
the people say, “Amazing!
We did it, all by ourselves!”
- Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
It seems strange to me that with all the decentralization in software (ex. git) that Linus remains the sole gatekeeper for what goes or doesn't go in the kernel. Splitting up the responsibility seems like it would be infinitely more logical.
It is already largely decentralized. There is a relatively fixed set of subsystem maintainers, which collect patches and merge from contributors. Then there are top figures like Greg and Linus, and the individual Linux distributions which maintain their own kernels by merging across. All Linus really does (well, he probably does more) is take and drop patches and every other week declare a certain merge set a version. Anyone can do that for their own kernel, but the central naming makes it "Linux" and focussed (e.g. for bug reporting).
That's at least my understanding.
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
I have never read anything where Linus is acting inappropriately. Sure he likes to rant, but when he is wrong, he will admit it.
He is even kind to clueless newbies who try to lecture him on the "evils" of goto on LKML.
His best rants are condemning breaking user space and hurting usability. But for every post that makes the news, there are at least 1000 that don't, because Linus isn't some rabid douche.
The kernel gets has so many contributors from around the world that he has to draw the line in a very explicit manner else people like Kay Sievers will keep submitting broken patches.
If anything he is usually pretty restrained, compared to project managers of big companies. The only difference is that development of the Linux kernel is in full public view.