Sharp: Closing a door [LWN.net]

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 8, 2015 21:42 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313)
In reply to: Sharp: Closing a door by fuhchee
Parent article: Sharp: Closing a door

Her list sounds horrible to me, because it requires kicking your experience, enthusiastic, productive people out periodically to make room for 'new' people (both in development and in 'leadership')

The Linux Kernel community hits most things in most categories of her list, but there are also a lot of things that are subjective.

She then seems to say that unless every item in every category is met, she deems the whole category and effort a failure.

She's welcome to try and organize and run a project per her criteria, but I don't think I would want to operate under those rules.

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Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 9, 2015 17:34 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

> Her list sounds horrible to me, because it requires kicking your experience, enthusiastic, productive people out periodically to make room for 'new' people (both in development and in 'leadership')

Unfortunately, here in the real world, all the evidence is that having someone in the same position of leadership for a long time results in that person becoming a real problem :-( There is a REASON that most democracies limit the amount of time a person can be President or whatever for. I used to be a fan of Margaret Thatcher. Until she developed Maggielomania. MOST leaders get to the point where they like power, and will hang on to it come hell or high water.

How long has Linus headed the Linux project? He seems to have kept himself remarkably grounded, but he's been around a heck of a long time. Too long? I don't know, but all the stats say yes, too long. ESR has burnt himself out, he's no longer that respected. RMS seems to be shooting himself in the foot far too often today :-( I hate to say it, but I think more and more long-time luminaries can no longer see the wood for the trees :-(

As a chemist, one historic example I like is Dalton. As a student and a young man, he was a remarkable scientist. As a respected elder sage, he was one big unmitigated disaster, holding back Chemistry for ages.

A possible counter-example is Churchill, but he regularly swung between power and political wilderness - that was probably a great help in keeping his feet on the ground.

Cheers,
Wol

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 9, 2015 17:52 UTC (Fri) by nevets (subscriber, #11875) [Link]

The reason I believe that Linus is still around and doesn't look anywhere close to burning out, is because he never micromanages. He gives maintainers lots of room to run their subsystems the way they seem fit. When there's in-fights within a subsystem, or competing systems, he doesn't get involved unless one side is totally off the mark and isn't changing. He's stated before that he doesn't want to get involved in those controversies, and wants the subsystems to figure things out themselves.

His biggest pet peeve (and he restated it again in Dublin), is breaking backward compatibility with user space. The majority of his rants that make headlines has mostly been due to maintainers thinking they could break a user application in the next release for whatever reason. Push that too much, and you will suffer the wrath of Linus. And usually for good reason too.

Linus has been very consistent in his leadership. I don't see him stepping down any time soon.