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> Codebases should not be using extensions, and Linux is wrong to do so.

Poppycock. Codebases should use any and all tools available to them to accomplish their goals, given the tradeoffs. Using non-standard language extensions is a tradeoff, and if it suits the Linux community and their goals, there's nothing wrong with that.

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That is one way non-standard extensions become standard.

For example, the [[maybe_unused]] and similar annotations in C++17 grew out of gcc builtins.

Of course, C++ is much more aggressive in stealing popular features from the community, especially Boost.

Boost came about from a few members of the ISO C++ committee as a way to iterate on library features. It would be a shame if none of that work made it's way back into the standard.

Boost was created as a place to beta-test future C++ features. Its whole point is to move stuff from boost:: to std::

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