What does decentralised means in this context? There are possibly thousands of companies/projects/orgs releasing their own version of the linux kernel.
Plus, as a user, I trust Linus more than any decentralised process I can think of.
Plus, as a user, I trust Linus more than any decentralised process I can think of.
Can you make a compelling argument for why that is? Is it that you believe Linus has your personal well being in mind or you are unfamiliar with decentralised "processes"?
edit: Questioning why someone trusts a person they never met over transparent processes that mitigate risks should not deserve downvotes. If we control what can be discussed, we also control what can be known...
Yes, the project is successful, as successful as an open source project can be. It seems to work fine since 1992.
Why would you bring up my personal well being ? Does a decentralised process (whatever that means actually, it's not defined at all yet) take my personal well being in to consideration???
There's a truism that states that past performance is not an indication of future behaviour and I tend to not trust unchecked power.
Linus may have the final say on a lot of things, particularly regarding policy surrounding contributions, but "unchecked" isn't so much an overstatement so much as a joke. Vast numbers of contributors, security auditors, and generally-interested hackers keep close eyes on the Linux kernel.
Decentralisation has three dimensions: Political, Logical and Architectural. In the case of Linux, I argue that the decentralised nature of open-source software development is what guarantees its safety and usefulness and not the individual merits of any one participant (person or company).
I think I'm not saying anything contentious when I say that Linus' employer has no special treatment in terms of linux development roadmap, and that most contributions are voluntary and no one needs to ask permission to download the code and fork the project and this is logical and political decentralisation.
Here's an article by Vitalik from Ethereum Foundation that I always recommend to those interested in understanding decentralisation: https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/the-meaning-of-decentrali...
"Instead of a roadmap, there are technical guidelines. Instead of a central resource allocation, there are persons an companies who all have a stake in the further development of the Linux kernel, quite independently from one another: People like Linus Torvalds and I don’t plan the kernel evolution. We don’t sit there and think up the roadmap for the next two years, then assign resources to the various new features. That's because we don’t have any resources. The resources are all owned by the various corporations who use and contribute to Linux, as well as by the various independent contributors out there. It's those people who own the resources who decide." - Andrew Morton on the kernel process
I've made the argument elsewhere in this thread that it's the decentralised nature of open-source that makes it safe to use and build on and not the personality or behaviour of any one person. Do you agree?
Decentralisation is the process of ensuring there is no SPF and to minimise unbalances in power.
For instance, in my country, decentralisation would mean we would have independent state law (like the US) and that most of our decision making structures aren't physically and politically centred in the nation's capital. In technology, we can take the Linux kernel maintenance process as an example of how decentralisation makes it possible to have China, US and EU companies funding the development process and using the software without (too much) fear.