Reducing kernel-maintainer burnout

I think people being paid to work on Linux is good. It allows those people to spend large blocks of time on it (that's very difficult for most people if it's not part of their job and they can only do odd bits on evenings and weekends) and spending large blocks of time is necessary for most things if you want to advance reasonably quickly.

But while most kernel developers are now paid Linux hasn't fallen into the trap of giving their employers too much technical say and becoming a corporate project. No manager of a kernel developper can say "I know it's half baked but merge it now beacuse marketing wants it" and Linux largely maintains the "it'll ship when it's ready" and "longterm maintability is important" mindsets that are missing in most commercial projects.

Companies paying kernel developpers do get some say in the "what" (ie if they're interested in some particular area of the kernel, say power management or networking, they can hire specialists in those areas and ask them to work on that rather than other parts of then kernel) but they don't get a say on the "how" (ie what implementation is acceptable, that lies with the maintainers and, ultimately, Linus).

Of course what works for Linux (by virtue of being a "commons" on which most higher level stuff is now built) probably doesn't work for a lot of other OSS projects which still struggle to find developpers.