Linus Torvalds Muses About Maintainer Gray Hairs, Next 'King of Linux'

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet, written by Steven Vaughan-Nichols: In a candid keynote chat at the Linux Foundation's Open Source Summit Europe, Linux creator Linus Torvalds shared his thoughts on kernel development, the integration of Rust, and the future of open source. Dirk Hohndel, Verizon's Open Source Program Office head and Torvalds friend, moderated their conversation about the Linux ecosystem. Torvalds emphasized that kernel releases, like the recent 6.11 version, are intentionally not exciting. 'For almost 15 years, we've had a very good regular cadence of releases,' he explained. With releases every nine weeks, this regularity aims for timeliness and reliability rather than flashy new features. The Linux creator noted that while drivers still make up the bulk of changes, core kernel development continues to evolve. 'I'm still surprised that we're doing very core development,' Torvalds said, mentioning ongoing work in virtual file systems and memory management.

Shifting back to another contentious subject -- maintainer burnout and succession planning -- Hohndel observed that 'maintainers are aging. Strangely, some of us have, you know, not quite as much or the right hair color anymore.' (Torvalds interjected that 'gray is the right color.') Hohndel continued, 'So the question that I always ask myself: Is it about time to talk about there being a mini-Linus?' Torvalds turned the question around. True, the Linux maintainers are getting older and people do burn out and go away. 'But that's kind of normal. What is not normal is that people actually stay around for decades. That's the unusual thing, and I think that's a good sign.' At the same time, Torvalds admitted, it can be intimidating for a younger developer to join the Linux kernel team 'when you see all these people who have been around for decades, but at the same time, we have many new developers. Some of those new developers come in, and three years later, they are top maintainers.'

Hohndel noted that 'to be the king of Linux, the main maintainer, you have to have a lot of experience. And the backup right now is Greg KH (Greg Kroah-Hartman, maintainer of the stable Linux kernel), who is about the same age as we are and has even less hair.' True, Torvalds responded, 'But the thing is, Greg hasn't always been Greg. Before Greg, there's been Andrew {Morton) and Alan (Cox). After Greg, there will be Shannon and Steve. The real issue is you have to have a person or a group of people that the development community can trust, and part of trust is fundamentally about having been around for long enough that people know how you work, but long enough does not mean to be 30 years.' Hohndel made one last comment: 'What I'm trying to say is, you've been doing this for 33 years. I don't want to be morbid, but I think in 33 years, you may no longer be doing this?' Torvalds, making motions as though he was using a walker, replied, 'I would love to still do this conference with you.' The report notes the contention around the integration of Rust, highlighted by the recent departure of Rust for Linux maintainer Wedson Filho. Despite resistance from some devs who prefer C and are skeptical of Rust, Torvalds remains optimistic about Rust's future in the kernel.

He said: 'Rust is a very different thing, and there are a lot of people who are used to the C model. They don't like the differences, but that's OK. In the kernel itself, absolutely nobody understands everything. I don't. I rely heavily on maintainers of various subsystems. I think the same can be true of Rust and C. I think it's one of our strengths in the kernel that we can specialize. Clearly, some people just don't like the notion of Rust and having Rust encroach on their area. But we've only been doing Rust for a couple of years, so it's way too early to say Rust is a failure.'

Meanwhile, Torvalds confirmed that the long-anticipated real-time Linux (RTLinux) project will finally be integrated into the kernel with the upcoming release of Linux 6.12.

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