- cross-posted to:
- linux@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- linux@lemmy.world
I get that Linus is a superhero, but it’s still so weird to me that this vital piece of the world’s infrastructure relies on one man.
I think its better to think of it like a president or prime minister. He might set the plan and direction and making the big decisions, but there are thousands of others supporting and making the plan actually happen.
In the past he has delegated the release to others as well.
So if the worst would happen, the linux project would continue operating fairly seamlessly.
Is benevolent dictator still the official title?
Technically yes.
Relevant xkcd https://xkcd.com/2347/
It is a small bunch of people though.
That’s because it doesn’t : ) He is the top level engineer/manager for releases and technical consultation but there are many more engineers “under” him leading and moving the pieces into place.
It’s also mind blowing to consider that as many other projects, both Linux and Python started as a hobyist project never meant to do more than cater to some personal needs.
This taught me how important is allocating time for your team for their personal projects, as the next school romance anime tagging system could be the cornerstone of every AI in the future.
That’s pretty much all of open source to be fair. It’s a real problem.
OSS is heavily undermaintained, always has been. But the world hasn’t exploded from it yet (somehow).
If you think OSS is undermaintained, you really ought to look at the way 90% of commercial software is developed.
It’s at least equally bad if not worse, with the added bonus that no one else can step in even if they really wanted to.
Wouldn’t surprise me to see unmaintained software anywhere.
The kernel will figure something out. There are already lots of companies investing their own development resources into it. Would just need a new leader to emerge. Perhaps it’d be a rotating group of people who are responsible for managing a single release.
Tons of smaller but important projects don’t have this luxury, though.
Crappy title.
It’s paraphrasing Torvalds himself though. It’s a cheeky title.
“… and I have absolutely no excuses to delay the v6.6 release any more, so here it is,”