The Plan For Linux After Torvalds Has a Kernel of Truth: There Isn't One (theregister.com) 60
The Linux kernel project lacks a formal succession plan for when Linus Torvalds steps down, Register columnist Rupert Goodwins writes. Torvalds has said "there's no need for formality" and that succession will occur naturally through community trust. "The next benevolent overlord will appear naturally," Torvalds believes.
Goodwins calls this approach dangerous, noting that "succession is always a time of uncertainty for those who like the way things are, and opportunity for those who do not." The kernel project faces existing tensions including overstretched maintainers doing "two jobs, the one they're paid for, and the Linux kernel work," commercial pressures from companies like Red Hat, and increasing maintenance burdens from automated bug reports. "Hope, as they say, is not a strategy," Goodwins writes.
Goodwins calls this approach dangerous, noting that "succession is always a time of uncertainty for those who like the way things are, and opportunity for those who do not." The kernel project faces existing tensions including overstretched maintainers doing "two jobs, the one they're paid for, and the Linux kernel work," commercial pressures from companies like Red Hat, and increasing maintenance burdens from automated bug reports. "Hope, as they say, is not a strategy," Goodwins writes.
It's not dangerous...for Linus Torvalds (Score:5, Insightful)
If Torvalds steps down on his own, he can pick a successor at that time. If something happens to him or he just quits without arranging a successor, there's going to be a fight. The second scenario argues for arranging for a successor earlier, but the problem is as soon as you do, there's temptation on the part of people (possibly including but not limited to the successor) to try to force the succession earlier than Torvalds would want. So it's in his best interest to not arrange for a successor until he's ready to step down.
This is the perfect time... (Score:5, Funny)
...to approach the good people at Microsoft to continue this project under their steady stewardship when the time comes.
Re: This is the perfect time... (Score:5, Funny)
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I think that we should ask Darl McBride and the former SCOX team to take over!
It'll be Oracle not Microsoft (Score:2)
...to approach the good people at Microsoft to continue this project under their steady stewardship when the time comes.
It'll be Oracle not Microsoft. :-)
Re:It's not dangerous...for Linus Torvalds (Score:5, Insightful)
Never rule out that there is a successor that he has in his mind but it's in a sealed envelope and the successor don't have a clue that he's the successor.
Re:It's not dangerous...for Linus Torvalds (Score:5, Insightful)
Or alternatively, the successor knows it, has agreed, and they are sensibly keeping it quiet to keep the corporate assholes out of the process.
Re: It's not dangerous...for Linus Torvalds (Score:2)
I doubt any corporate entities even care as they not only tend to maintain their own forks already, but also already get to push priority because they're already funding the thing. The ones you probably want to keep out are the ideologues, especially the ones who would want to move to a newer version of the GPL, or worse, the affero version.
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Well, maybe. But keeping any of the usual assholes out is a good idea.
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Re:It's not dangerous...for Linus Torvalds (Score:5, Insightful)
Almost as bad as a non-existent succession plan is a succession plan even the successor knows nothing about. If Linus has a successor, that successor should be well aware, and already be a contributor to that succession plan. This isn't a will where you're pleasantly surprised your rich great-uncle left you his house on the French Riviera, this is a major project that is an integral component of thousands of technologies and workflows.
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I think there was someone who did it when Linus was on his sabbatical. Maybe the person would step in again?
"They" burn the letter (Score:2)
Never rule out that there is a successor that he has in his mind but it's in a sealed envelope and the successor don't have a clue that he's the successor.
Never forget the numerous movies and tv shows where someone burns that envelope before a judge ever sees it. :-)
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My take is these plans are in place, they are just not getting published or discussed publicly. Wisely.
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I would suggest that this is the sort of matter that would be best dealt with in the same way as estate planning is. Prepare a legal will (succession plan), leave it with a literal lawyer in this case since this Linux kernel is certainly more than a mere hobby. No need to tell EVERYONE who the successor(s) are to avoid fighting.
How is Linus currently the unquestioned leader? Is it by legal means or simply by implicit acclamation? If the former, then only a legal document and process will work. If the latter, then no legal document matters. Furthermore, succession definitely requires that Linus lets the entire world know about this successor, since that successor will also have to rule by implicit acclamation. Even then, Linus has grown to be a cult of personality, and part of his implicit acclamation is due to that cult of pe
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Linux is Linus's personal trademark. Since the code is open-source though, anyone can copy it and publish it under a different name, and nothing stops them from doing that right now. The terms of the GPL prevent such copies from being retroactively changed back to closed-source, so everyone for all time will know its pedigree originated from Linux. In the event of Linus's untimely death, there will undoubtedly be several such copies scrambling for community validation, and that's just fine.
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Honestly it's kind of a monarchy. And that makes his approach dangerous.
There's a benevolent overlord (King) who rules for life. And while the King is strong everything is pretty stable.
But the moment the King is gone you either have a strong designated heir lined up, or there's a succession crisis. And that leads to all sort of complications up to and including a civil war (fork).
The fact is that Linus is still King, and if he needs to designate a successor. Either the next King, or a Debian style election
Re: It's not dangerous...for Linus Torvalds (Score:5, Insightful)
You're thinking of it like you would software without a well-defined license.
Anyone can try to become the next Linus, but no one can force one on us because of the license.
Worst case we get a bunch of forks, then some number of them between 1 and more than 1 become[s] dominant and life goes on.
It might even be a net win if there's more than one winner.
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Nope, the Kingdom is the project with all the relationships and developers attached.
As I said, unless someone is specifically endorsed by Linus (and maybe not even then) I'm not sure anyone has the legitimacy to succeed him as benevolent dictator.
In either case, the trouble with a pile of forks is people start wasting time with divided efforts, porting patches back and forth between forks, and infighting.
Hopefully one project becomes dominant, but it's not assured, and there's a risk of long term fragmentat
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Re:It's not dangerous...for Linus Torvalds (Score:4, Insightful)
You seem to have what I would call a mistaken idea: that Linus will "choose" his successor. He won't. The community will. Even if he recommends someone, the community will either accept or reject them (or do both). It is entirely possible that nobody can really succeed him (because he has a genuinely unique combination of skills, motivations, and contacts), so he will effectively have no successor. The structure of the open kernel project now called Linux will change.
I think that is just reality and anyone trying to "choose" his successor in advance of it needing to happen is just getting in early on the politics of the community deciding who coordinates core kernel development after Linus steps down. If that is even still a thing and it doesn't splinter. (There is a reasonable argument to be made that it has already splintered into the distribution kernels, and what we call the core kernel is just the working space for coordination between the splinters.) I think deciding succession in advance is pretty demonstrably a waste of time, and possibly even counter-productive, since the situation is likely to change between now and when the change needs to happen. I'm glad that Linus himself seems to be aware of this.
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If the successor is another benevolent dictator then we're looking at a monarchy, and it's a dynastic succession.
If he names a successor, especially beforehand, then the community gets a veto, and if the candidate passes they can probably take the reigns when Linus leaves.
If he doesn't name a successor then you get a bunch of claimants, each arguing for their legitimacy to the throne.
If one wins the argument they can still succeed him, but there's a serious risk of fragmentation (long term forks) or simple
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how did Linus get into this position in the first place? Was he selected or did it just naturally come about? Why do people show him so much respect?
im not asking in an inflammatory way, just wasn't around/involved at the time but now seeing the way he is regarded, im curious of the story, can anyone point me in that direction?
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He literally wrote Linux [wikipedia.org].
Since it started as his personal project he was the leader from the beginning. And since he turned out to be a capable leader and never got bored and left there was never any reason to take away that authority as it skyrocketed in popularity.
Basically, he's King because he founded the Kingdom.
The trouble a successor King would have is they could never have that kind of legitimacy, so some kind of more "Democratic" structure (self-appointed electors) is the most likely follow up.
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oh, ok, that makes perfect sense and i did not realize he started it.
thank you for answering without being a douche.
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No matter who is in the succession fight, the successor will be Tom Wambsgans.
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Or maybe there isn't one and someone will step up. There probably will be several successors, and the one that that will be "it" will be determined by who the developers are more willing to work with.
The lieutenants do a basic job of maintaining their subsystems and chances are there is probably someone they feel can step up into the role. If there's a fight, it would be fought by whom the developers pick to work with.
It's an open source project, and the Linux tree is the official tree, but there are trees
Linus isn't really directing Linux, he's QA (Score:2)
Linus is more of a QA department ensuring only professional high quality additions or changes are made.
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I feel like a factor that makes it weird is that anyone who wants to head up the linux kernel can... just fork it and go. And then the market decides who to follow.
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Perhaps name someone in a formal paper document and seal it in an envelope marked "In case a bus hits me".
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If Torvalds steps down on his own, he can pick a successor at that time.
The best succession plans are those executed well in advance with significant coaching and mentoring for the upcoming role. A great many things have gone to shit when someone says "I'm out, I nominate Bob to take over, Byebye!"
Re:Great (Score:5, Informative)
Granted, his communication style didn’t appeal to everyone, but how could he not demand absolute rigor from thousands of developers, most of whom he doesn’t even know, on such a highly technical project?
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As de Gaulle once said: Les cimetières sont remplis de gens irremplaçables cemeteries are full of indispensable people.
Hardly anyone run's Linus' Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
You run RedHat's Linux, Debian's Linux, Ubuntu's Linux, SCO's Linux.
Linus is the master of main. But every distro changes and compiles their own version. When Linus goes away, the most powerful closenit group of kernel maintainers will end up winning the battle royale to become the masters of universe. The surviving losers will try to dominate their branch. But the most actively maintained garden will have the best bush. You will end up with the popular branch, and every distro patching and compiling their own version.
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It's open source (Score:3)
Each developer has their own fork. Either they agree on a new boss, or each maintains their own fork, with one eventually becoming the new default for most Linux distributions and people will contribute there.
He's waiting for (Score:1)
the year of the Linux desktop. THEN he'll set up a succession plan.
Forks for the Fork God (Score:5, Insightful)
Any Example of This Working? (Score:3)
I can't think of an example where not having a real succession plan ended well.
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*tries to think, but his head explodes from the sheer number of counter-examples.
WHO CARES? (Score:1)
Linux is an operating system, limited by various things like dismanagement, crude discussions, and lack of vision (see bcache, btrfs, murderer-fs, support for i686, etc.)
Linus is one guy. So's Greg K-H. So are THOUSANDS of devs contributing. Sorry Intel has chosen to take Clear Linux out of play. (h/t Michael Larabell @ Phoronix).
This will all survive just fine. Linus isn't dead yet, and he hasn't retired. But hey, speculate on.
Distro specific kernels a stap backwards ... (Score:2)
Linux is an operating system
No, Linux is numerous operating systems. Fortunately sharing a common kernel that allows developers to support several of these operating systems.
Should the kernel become operating system specific, distro specific, then that would be a step backwards to the various commercial unix workstation flavors of the 1990s. Expect to see apps that are Ubuntu specific.
Can it have a succession plan? (Score:4, Interesting)
Can if have a succession plan?
Serious question. It is open source after all. Linux - is proper as we understand it is "Linus's project" take Linux away from the helm and what really would make one fork more legitimate vs anyone? That it happens to be hosted on kernel.org?
I think Linus is right, someone from the inner circle with commit rights will just step up and others will follow! The disaffected (individuals or corporations) might indeed try to fork the kernel and see if they can capture the mind share. Maybe they can, and if they actually make it better well ... maybe Linus is just fine with it.
Re:Can it have a succession plan? (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem there is that the BSD folk did that, once William Jolitz quit, and found that people followed a very large number of different groups, to the point where none of the BSDs really progressed the way they could, and perhaps should, have done. The scene splintered. One of the most rock-solid, reliable Unix kernels ever devised has, to put it bluntly, not died (despite Netcraft confirming it) but seriously dwindled into a small niche.
You've got to remember, 386BSD came out a year or so before Linux and had X11 running on it by version 0.1 because essentially all the major challenges had already been overcome. It was THE OS to use, for a long time, for most serious geeks, although numbers were seriously cut into when Manchester Regional Computing Centre produced what was possibly the very first Linux distro, using Shoestring as the bootstrap. The MCC distro was easy to install - far easier than any BSD - and although it couldn't do much, it did turn heads. Further, Linux was gelling around a standard framework, whilst BSD by that time was starting to fragment and bicker.
My great fear is that, when Linus finally stops running the show, Linux will suffer much the same fate. There's a LOT of highly-strung egos involved, and a LOT of very rich companies who would far far prefer Linux to be owned solely by them.
IBM seems to control Linux already (Score:1)
I think all this systemd crap came from IBM. I think IBM has been effectively controlling Linux long before IBM bought Red Hat.
Linux is really just IBM controlled systemd now.
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You may think that, but that doesn't mean you're not talking nonsense. IBM was rather late to the Linux party. Long after systemd was a thing. But I digress. It's fun to make up and spread conspiracy theories. I'm old enough to remember when MS was the boogie man. Happy days.
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You may think that, but that doesn't mean you're not talking nonsense. IBM was rather late to the Linux party. Long after systemd was a thing.
Ummm - No. What are you talking about?
Dictatorships should evolve naturally (Score:2)
When one autocrat leaves office, there should be a power struggle for popular support. That is generally earned by reputation earned, rightly or wrongly, by appeal to the popular consensus.
So we can expect whoever embraces turning the Linux desktop into the next Windows 11 AI menace is going to win these wars. Much in the same way that SystemD won. And that Rust is well on its way to seizing victory over C and C++ in the kernel. It's been nearly three decades of amusement for me to see the Linux kernel deve
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It has never worked in any empire, it has never worked in any software development team, it has never worked in any rock or metal band. I see very very little reason for saying there "should" be a power struggle, that always ends badly with no exceptions in any domain. C++ has never been in the kernel, so it's hard to see how Rust could defeat it there. Rust is unlikely to replace C because they do different things well - if the Linux devs have half the intelligence they seem to, there will be a natural fed
Succession plan for an open source project? (Score:2)
This isn't oligarchy or dictatorship. Leaders emerge organically. Sure Linus has control over what goes into his version of the kernel. But that is where it ends. He is asking the community to pick a new leader when the time comes. And they will. People rise up to the occasion. Just like he did. It is also possible that there wouldn't a single person controlling the kernel after Linus is gone, but a group of people. I think that is a strong possibility.
That plan will not end well (Score:2)
Torvalds is the founder of Linux. The organization has literally never had a leadership transition. Leadership transition is a very well-studied thing. Even well-organized transition efforts fail frequently, and “meh it’ll sort itself out” is kind of like saying “meh that raging building fire will sort itself out”. It certainly will, but you might
Thompson and Ritchie (Score:2)
While pondering Linux, it is appropriate to pause for a moment and think respectful thoughts for Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie.
AI Linus (Score:2)
that is rather neive.. (Score:2)
Supreme Leader Xing will assign the PLA to assure that Linux remains independent and free.