Linux doesn't control Linux

Posted Jun 10, 2003 3:36 UTC (Tue) by giraffedata (guest, #1954)
Parent article: Where did that code come from?

In one sense, it is one of the mostly tightly controlled projects out there; one - and exactly one - person can commit code to the mainline kernel tree. If Linus does not merge a patch, it simply does not go in.

This is a common misconception about Linux. There are a ton of Linux operating systems out there. Linus controls just one version of just one part -- the kernel. And hardly anybody runs Linus' version of the kernel. The provenance of the kernel code that did not go through Linus, and of all the code that isn't even part of the kernel is of equal concern to people such as SCO.