There needs to be more frank discussions about corporate and vested interests and how to protect the independence of the kernel which Linus has managed well till now.
Automatic assumptions that what is good for Redhat or Google is good for everyone do not hold. These companies have real power, thousands of employees, media and industry support, funding, and lots of people reluctant to go against them or keen to curry favour so they can overwhelm any decision or discussion with resources. This must be recognized.
Linus is obviously not easy to replace but there should be some kind of succession planning and also thinking in detail about how to retain the independence of the development process from powerful interests.
This latter is something that not enough attention has been paid to in open source. Security fud is often used to raise complexity and indirectly encourage corporate interests and monopoly. The control of standards is also used to push complexity and raise barriers.
In the long term its only the ability of smaller groups to develop software that can ensure users are not held hostage by vested interests. The Linux kernel is hugely important to open source and it needs to be managed well to encourage and motivate the next generation of contributors.
Automatic assumptions that what is good for Redhat or Google is good for everyone do not hold. These companies have real power, thousands of employees, media and industry support, funding, and lots of people reluctant to go against them or keen to curry favour so they can overwhelm any decision or discussion with resources. This must be recognized.
Linus is obviously not easy to replace but there should be some kind of succession planning and also thinking in detail about how to retain the independence of the development process from powerful interests.
This latter is something that not enough attention has been paid to in open source. Security fud is often used to raise complexity and indirectly encourage corporate interests and monopoly. The control of standards is also used to push complexity and raise barriers.
In the long term its only the ability of smaller groups to develop software that can ensure users are not held hostage by vested interests. The Linux kernel is hugely important to open source and it needs to be managed well to encourage and motivate the next generation of contributors.