Decision process

Posted Sep 30, 2025 12:44 UTC (Tue) by daeler (subscriber, #130460)
Parent article: Bcachefs removed from the mainline kernel

Just curious, no judgement: How is this decision made? Can Linus just decide that he removes something from the kernel?

Decision process

Posted Sep 30, 2025 12:56 UTC (Tue) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

Yes, Linus can make that kind of decision. He doesn't just do it on his own, though; there was a long series of public and private discussions that led up to this one.

Decision process

Posted Sep 30, 2025 12:57 UTC (Tue) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (1 responses)

> Can Linus just decide that he removes something from the kernel?

Linus (just like everyone else with the Linux sources, can add or remove anything he wants.

Of course, nobody else is forced to get "Linux" from him directly. Indeed, the vastly overwhelming majority of Linux users get their kernel from someone else, with features, drivers, and fixes not present in, or removed outright from, Linus's Linux.

Decision process

Posted Sep 30, 2025 13:37 UTC (Tue) by Lionel_Debroux (subscriber, #30014) [Link]

Note that things go the other way round as well: security fixes available in Linus' Linux but missing from other kernels because the backporting process didn't occur for some reason (difficulty, interest, etc.).
The older a third-party kernel version is, the more it is likely to be missing both backports for security fixes, and vulnerabilities in code introduced in newer versions but not backported to the given third-party kernel (some vendors perform large amounts of backports to their franken-kernels).