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Wireless Utopia

The journey towards a free wireless world.

Kernel Panic

Saturday, May 06, 2006

Anything on Linux count on Slashdot to be on to it. The lastest one is about the Linux Production Kernel being too buggy. The discussion around it really points to some disturbing things about the project. Internal Politics seems to have taken it over.
During his talk, Morton discussed the 2.6 kernel development process, explaining that if people want to get their code into the kernel they should send it to him, not Linus Torvalds, who maintains the development kernel.
Going back in history a bit we find that it was the OSDL with some corporate backing which broke off Linux into two branches with Linus Trovalds as the maintainer of the development one and Andrew Morton as the lead of the production branch. Seems that things between Andrew and Linus has not been that smooth after all. Also noteworthy is that it corporate backing which actually caused the split. Does smell of a conspiracy here.

Linux is at the heart of the Open Source movement and still its torch bearer. Its biggest asset is its community of developers. Not the corporates who are more concerned about thier hardware which runs Linux and has a big market. And if they somehow manage to alienate the community, that would be the end of it all!

Tags: Linux Kernel OSDL Linus Trovalds Andrew Morton OSS OpenSource
posted by Rajiv, 9:02 AM

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