After 34 years, the Linux kernel community finally has a contingency plan to replace Linus Torvalds — formal plan drawn up now community is 'getting grey and old'
Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel, has been its lead maintainer since its inception in 1991. That's a long way back now, and in the man's own words, the kernel community is "getting grey and old." Interestingly enough, though, it was only few days ago that a formal plan was drawn to replace Torvalds, should he wish to retire or something happens to him, or whoever else may be in charge.
The contingency plan now in place is fairly simple, and only triggered if there's not a graceful transition when the occasion arises. Should there be a need for it, the kernel community will first find an Organizer, who is the last Maintainer Summit organizer, or the current Linux Foundation Technical Advisory Board Chair (TAB).
The Organizer has 72 hours to kick off discussions with the invitees of the most recent Maintainers Summit. Should 15 months have elapsed since the last Maintainers Summit, then it's up to the TAB to determine the invitees, who may bring other maintainers in as they see fit. This collective then presents its decision in two weeks' time and communicates to the community via mailing list.
If push came to shove, even without this official plan, it's likely that the kernel community would easily reach an agreement. After all, as Torvalds himself remarked in the past, there are not a lot of open-source projects that "have maintainers that have literally been around for over three decades".
Despite expressing some concern about the number of maintainers earlier in the decade, he's not currently concerned about the technical acumen of the talent pool, either, going as far as saying that "it's not instant, but there are new people who come in, and three years later they are a main developer."
This scenario should be familiar to any software project manager, as it illustrates the key concept of "bus factor," or the number of people that can get hit by a bus before your project is in trouble. Right now, that figure is a nice round zero for the Linux kernel, despite the community being good at self-management. For the time being, Linus Torvalds hasn't expressed any desire to stop being the Linux kernel head, but any increase in the bus factor is welcome, especially coming from nil.
Bruno Ferreira is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware. He has decades of experience with PC hardware and assorted sundries, alongside a career as a developer. He's obsessed with detail and has a tendency to ramble on the topics he loves. When not doing that, he's usually playing games, or at live music shows and festivals.
I've always felt and argued that Linus' primary quality is his ability to produce good social code via decision making and supporting a culture, rather than programming computer code.
One of his first such decisions was to recognize that others were better at writing operating system code and to offer his code to full replacement.
And he is now repeating the very same concept on a meta level, just what I'd have expected and I quite sincerely admire.
I don't praise easily: they say it spoils character...
