Maintain the maintainers
Kernel dad chats at the Open Source Summit 2020.
The Linux Foundation has had its annual shindig at Open Source Summit 2020, and this year Linus Torvalds spoke about current and future kernel development.
Part of head kernel maintainer Linus Torvalds’s job is to tour the world giving keynote talks at the various conferences and chiefly the Open Source Summit, which The Linux Foundation puts on around the globe. At the European event back in May this year he discussed a range of topics, including how Kernel 3.12 release got its name of Suicidal Squirrel and how the latest 5.4 release was awarded the name Kleptomaniac Octopus (this is quite a step up from its initial codename, Nesting Opossum).
At the latest Summit in North America Linus discussed the difficulty of finding kernel maintainers. He explained that, “It’s hard to find people who really look at other people’s code and funnel that code upstream all the way, eventually, to my tree… It is one of the main issues we have.” He went on to explain that he doesn’t write code any longer and his main job is reading and replying to emails saying “No” to people and suggesting code changes.
When asked if C is at risk of becoming the new COBOL Linus replied, “C is still one of the top 10 languages” but on Go and Rust adoption he said, “I’m convinced it’s going to happen. It might not be Rust. But it is going to happen.”
You can watch a number of talks from the Open Source Summit 2020 at www.youtube. com/user/thelinuxfoundation/videos.