Linux kernel: democracy that doesn't vote [LWN.net]

Linux kernel: democracy that doesn't vote

Posted Apr 25, 2008 4:14 UTC (Fri) by aegl (guest, #37581)
In reply to: Linux kernel: democracy that doesn't vote by giraffedata
Parent article: ELC: Morton and Saxena on working with the kernel community

No ... every vote doesn't have equal weight. People who have demonstrated expertise in a particular area will generally have far more influence on a merge decision than people without a track record, who in turn may have more weight than people who have publically demonstrated their lack of knowledge.

But even Linus gets "outvoted" from time to time (he just merged kgdb even though he really doesn't like the idea of kernel debuggers).

So the process is rather vague, and sometimes surprising ... but there is a general philosophy behind it. Maybe a merge decision can be summed up by answering the question: "Will this patch make the kernel better?" ... but this is still poorly specified unless you have the same opinion about what "better" means in the context of Linus' (and many of the other maintainers and key developers) goals.

Some of the people who find it "hard to understand" the process are under the mistaken impression that the goal is commercial success. It isn't. The goal is to be the best kernel for its users. Commercial success might follow as a result of being good. But if you ask Linus how much he cares about the "market segment share" that Linux has, I bet his answer will be something like "not at all".

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Linux kernel: democracy that doesn't vote

Posted Apr 25, 2008 15:46 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

OK, that's not voting. Voting is a mathematical process; there are lots of other words for that: consensus, giving opinion, giving advice, etc.

If merely stating your position on LKML could be called voting, then citizens that go before a city council meeting to argue against a new zoning ordinance would be said to be voting on the ordinance.

Voting is the simplest way to implement democracy, and I think many people assume it's the only way, which is why Andrew feels the need to call it "democracy that doesn't vote."