So what is going to happen when Linus gets to old to keep on to maintain the kernel ? I know there is a whole team, but he seems to have some kind of executive role in what’s gets released and not.
The old question of “what happens when Linus/other senior kernel dev dies” mattered far more like 20+ years ago than it does now. The kernel developers are organized quite well, Linux is in general an extremely well-organized open source project these days, and there are several who could fill in. Linus’ “2nd” is Greg Kroah-Hartman, who is the lead maintainer of the stable kernel branch (i.e. the one most are using). Linus is the lead maintainer of the in-development branch.
But of course we hope that Linus continues doing this for a long time. Most people never create even one world-changing technology, Linus casually created two (Linux + Git).
We’ll just train an AI from his mailing list posts and continue as usual.
Creating a kernel is hard, Linux itself is not going anywhere.
If all current maintainers suddenly disappear, several corporations, who heavily depend on Linux, will maintain their own forks, so we will get Google kernel for phones, Amazon kernel for datacenters, Valve kernel for gaming, and probably some European initiative kernel for PCs and laptops to do document editing.all linux devs just gonna apply to microsoft
This is the way
Greg Kroah-Hartman will take up the role then. He has filled in for Linus in the past.
And they never run the same version of the kernel so that if one crashes the other is still available
And what if he also dies? If not suddenly
Then we fork Linus and continue as usual.
Put down the lube, and step away from Linus!
He just turns into a Zombie Process and keeps going
I first read “a zombie princess” and I like this idea more.
Why does it feel like I’ve seen this episode of Adventure Time?
nohup him now before it’s too late!
Someone else will take it up. Hopefully the transition is a graceful one, but it could be forked if necessary.
