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Comment by 1970-01-01 | Hacker News Reader

1970-01-01·

Linux will be the ultimate test for this. Linus will eventually retire or die. The individual that takes it from there sets the future for all open source. I cannot imagine open source existing if the kernel maintenance is squandered.

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There has been open source before Linux and there will be open source after Linux. Yes Linux is a flagship project but the whole culture of open source is much broader than it.

Disagree, Linux is too big to fail. Too many people depend on it. It may get chaotic, but worst-case distributions will start collecting patches, as they already do for many unmaintained projects. Eventually one or two of them will emerge as the new upstream.

I guess the worst case is that future Linux will end entirely controlled by Google/Facebook/, Microsoft.

While I dislike a lot of what comes out of the FAANG companies, even if the names change over time...

I generally feel if most of them can agree on something, it's probably an okay direction.

That's generally how politics works, where you find the common ground is generally the better option for everyone.

Linus should take a lesson from history and appoint the successor in advance, and publicly groom that person for the role, so nobody would have any doubts.

He doesn't seem to be as afraid of that as OP.

https://itwire.com/business-it-news/open-source/torvalds-say...

If it doesn't go to Greg Kroah-Hartman and continue much the same I'll eat my shoe.

Greg is older than Linus.

As soon as they opened up the possibility for AI code in the kernel the writing was already on the wall.

See ya'll in BSD land.

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