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Comment by pjmlp | Hacker News Reader

This is a mix of the FOSS generation getting old, and the newers ones rather care about free beer than ideology, and guess what, people writing that free beer software apparently have bills to pay, and VC folks to keep happy.

I won't be around to validate this, however I am asserting GNU/Linux will not survive after everyone that was part of its genesis is long gone.

Something else will take over it, will still somehow support POSIX in some form, just like most UNIX workloads were eventually taken over by GNU/Linux

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>I won't be around to validate this, however I am asserting GNU/Linux will not survive after everyone that was part of its genesis is long gone.

I'm 100% with you on this. I also think that if Linus were to die today, the kernel would fall apart within 10 years.

Historically that's what happens with any concentration of power and skill, things break when the founder/monarch dies. Look at Rome's endless civil wars and the countless Chinese dynasties. Exception being when a capable successor is properly placed and accepted by the inner circle. Does Linus have an "heir"?

>Does Linus have an "heir"?

No formalized succession plan whatsoever.

Linus is not worried:

If Linus Torvalds Got Hit By a Bus Would Linux Die? (2012) <https://www.serverwatch.com/server-news/if-linus-torvalds-go...>

If I get hit by a bus, Linux will go on just fine says Linus Torvalds (2015) <https://www.theregister.com/2015/06/17/now_i_can_die_happy_w...>

Tens of thousands of developers around the world have contributed to the Linux kernel. Even Microsoft contributes.

It's not about the contributions, it's about the coordination.

Meanwhile a lot of boxes are still on RHEL-6 point releases that use linux-2.6. Not even those will be gone in 10 years.

Subscription based apps and locked devices are the future. They've built the moat and now they'll withdraw the bridge. S/w industry will become just like any other, where cost of entry for an average person will be prohibitive. The big advantage of s/w was it was inherently a level playing field, but only in the abstract. When it meets the real world its just another rent-seeking industry.

I want a POSIX compatibility layer on top of a microkernel, with a stable driver API so I can download a driver and have it work as-is for 10+ years.

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