El Reg reports
Just a few days after asking the Linux community to let him take a break, Linus Torvalds has said the project he kicked off 1991 can now get along without him. He was, characteristically, blunt in his recent interview with Bloomberg, saying Linux would survive his death.
"There is no concrete plan of action if I die," [...] "but that would have been a bigger deal 10 or 15 years ago. People would have panicked. Now I think they'd work everything out in a couple of months."
[...] "The technical know-how these days is less," Torvalds says. "It's more about being trusted and being available. Greg [Kroah-Hartman] is the obvious No. 2. He could take it up, and then there are a couple of other people."
Torvalds reiterated his intention to keep [unloading] f-bombs on fellow kernel devs, because his language happens in a "bigger context" and people are "better off" knowing how he feels.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday June 18 2015, @11:34PM
Come to think of it.. the other big free operating system in the BSD family has been managing without Linus for decades.. :p
(on a serious note, it might be a good idea for a lot of projects to consider their continuation plans. People don't live forever yet!)
(Score: 1) by heiner on Friday June 19 2015, @12:15AM
BSD is not GPL.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday June 19 2015, @01:38AM
How negative!! Be inclusive, mate, have a positive attitude, be affirmative.
Like: The first rule of Tautology club is the first rule of Tautology club. [xkcd.com]
(grin) [soylentnews.org]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 19 2015, @12:54AM
The reason that project is held in high esteem is in no small part because of the take-no-prisoners attitude of its ramrod [google.com] wrt code quality.
OTOH, as has been mentioned, those projects where a developer/modifier is not bound to pass on the freedom that he received with the source code are viewed with a jaundiced eye by many.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Friday June 19 2015, @02:59AM
On a serious note, if Linux is considered a niche OS globally (and it is), BSD is a niche OS even if we restrict the picture to free OSes. Yes, BSD is "the other big free OS (family)", but compared to Linux its market share is almost non-existent (feel free to cite contradicting sources for this).
Off the top of my head, the picture looks *roughly* like (emphasis "off the top of my head" and "roughly"):
All OSes:
Win/Mac 90%-99%, Linux 1-9%, Other 0.5%
Free OSes:
Linux 80-95%, BSD 5-10%, Plan 9, Haiku, Inferno, etc. 0.1%
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 5, Informative) by novak on Friday June 19 2015, @03:13AM
On a serious note, if Linux is considered a niche OS globally (and it is)
This is just wrong. Linux is the standard for both servers and embedded OSs. Linux is niche on the desktop, but far from obscure overall.
novak
(Score: 3, Insightful) by gnuman on Friday June 19 2015, @04:36AM
Indeed. You have a cable or DSL router? That most likely runs Linux. You have a TV? My LG TV runs Linux. You have an Android phone? That's Linux. Google runs on what? Linux.
Calling Linux "niche" is like calling everything that isn't a PC "niche" market. If anything, PC is current a "niche" market when it comes to computing.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday June 19 2015, @06:47PM
Otoh, market share has not been a good indicator of quality. Mostly it's an indicator of driver and 3rd party software availability.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 19 2015, @08:31AM
How do you know? We don't have a Linus-free world to compare.
Maybe without Linus, people would have flocked around GNU Hurd, and would have made that kernel so good that people would have abandoned BSD to move to that much superior operating system. :-)