Forking Linux? Fugettaboutit! [LWN.net]

Forking Linux? Fugettaboutit!

Posted Apr 22, 2008 1:15 UTC (Tue) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648)
In reply to: Yup. The only working model by khim
Parent article: ELC: Morton and Saxena on working with the kernel community

You don't even need 50% of votes to fork the kernel: 10-15% of developers will be enough.

I just can't see the Linux kernel forking anytime soon. As long as Linus still maintains a presence, it would be impossible from a marketing perspective (not to mention a complete loss of credibility) to fork the kernel. After all, Linus wouldn't go "both ways" and actively maintain divergent forks, and having the "Kernel supported by Linus himself" as a sales/market pitch would certainly do little for the competing fork. Not that it couldn't happen legally (I'm thinking GPLv2 here), nor that it hasn't happened before (the aforementioned BSDs).

As for the parent comment by Frej, please understand that regardless of any "loaded" comments in the article with respect to how Linux is managed, the management style works because (1) Linus plays a big part of kernel development, even after almost 17 years of hacking Linux; (2) he is unusually skilled and talented at many aspects of operating system theory and kernel hacking, software engineering, and, most importantly, people skills (arguably the most difficult of these), and (3) he commands a great deal of respect because of (1) and (2). Whatever you (or the article) call it, the management style is what it is due to 17 years of continuous development. And, besides, ELC keynote speaker Andrew Morton works with Linus on a daily basis, so I suppose they know each other quite well.

Forgive me for all the Linus "gushing"; I've done it here on LWN.net before. But I still firmly believe that Linux owes much of its success to Linus' positive attributes mentioned above.

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GPL ensues democracy, Linus make it work

Posted Apr 22, 2008 6:27 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

It's totally different question: why the democracy work. GPL ensues democracy - with or without Linus. Since you can not create proprietary fork the only reason to fork is if Linus makes bad decisions (BSD license, in comparison, allows democracy, not ensues it). And if Linus will make bad decisions on regular basis you'll see that this "Kernel supported by Linus himself" will quickly become moot point (see gcc/ecgs story, for example: forks like pgcc were frowned upon and rarely used till a lot of developers "voted" against FSF's rule). Now, it's true that Linus is enforcing some decisions - but so do "real" democracies (have you seen any where all decisions are made by votes of everyone?). They have government for everyday's work and even fundamental things like taxes are rarely voted by the "population at large".

Free software is a democratic institution because everyone have exactly one "vote" - it's just that this vote must be cast with your feet, not with your ballot. Unlike real life (where you'll be forced to change lifestyle and your spouse and kids will suffer) "vote with your feet" in virtual world only affects your work, nothing else - so it's proper vote. Proprietary software is, of course, planned economy: what the management says - goes. And as usual when resources are scarce and goal is clear planned economy work best (recall 20th years of last century in USSR and US) but when you have enough resources to try different approaches and don't have a clear goal... take a look on Windows Vista and Linux today...