I really wonder what's going to happen to Linux once Linus is gone. I think we've seen now that just a week after he took a break the community started falling apart rapidly.
The public remains largely unaware.
Huge PR battles over which logo to use erupt, somebody sneaks backdoors into the majority of the kernels. Somebody else backdoors the backdoors. Pretty soon over half the code base consists of backdoors and embedded nVidia graphics drivers.
Buzzfeed publish a list of 15 linux kernels you won't believe exist. A week has now passed since Linus left the project, and we have hit Peak Kernel.
Linux fades from the cusp of becoming a mainstream desktop OS and eventually settles into a niche server role until the 2038 bug wipes out humanity due to some buggy memory management running on an ICBM launch computer.
Chrome OS sees a slight uptick in users.
carlmr, you issued a nice writing prompt.
Thank you.
The belgian king once resigned for a single day so the parliament could pass a law on abortion.
Could Linus have pulled of a similiar stunt?
https://www.nytimes.com/1990/04/05/world/belgian-king-unable...
If you mean that Linus didn't want the flak for the changes, then that seems like weak leadership on his part, and since iiuc Greg is likely to take over kernel management when Linus ever retires, passing the controversial work to his eventual replacement is bad tactics as well, since it'll undermine Greg's authority in some people's eyes if he takes over.
Though, it's true that with "eternal" project-leads like Linus, or recently Guido van Rossum at Python, we never think about what will happen when they are gone. But I think with big projects like Linux they will be fine. There are enough people to replace them, even if things might change, the project moves on.
We should think more about important projects from single developers. What about vim? Or all the important plugins/addons? There are so many small important gears around which depends on so few support.