8 ms·

On the scalability of Linus

82 points by jpablo 16y ago

milesf 16y ago
People use Linus' kernel version because of his track record. Don't like it? Fork it. The day Linus starts failing miserably is the day another mainline will emerge, and everyone will switch to that. Nothing here to worry about.
- blueberry 16y ago
  There might be comparable forks to Linux out there right now. Does anyone switch? No. Linux is the windows of Unices. You can't dethrone it just by coming up with a better fork.
  - derefr 16y ago
    There's a difference between being slightly better than something that's still satisfactory, and being good in comparison to something that's no longer satisfactory. Look at X11: everyone used XFree86, even though forks were possible—until they decided to go in a direction people didn't like. Then people started using X.Org pretty damned fast.
    - blueberry 16y ago
      While I agree with what you are saying, your analogy is not completely accurate. Switching GUI is nowhere near switching the kernel in terms of risk and the hassle that might come with the change. The main reasons for inertia are the linux servers and the development stack that's built on top of linux servers. Most deployed Linuces have neither X.Org nor XFree86 installed on them.
      - nzmsv 16y ago
        The kernel is already evolving constantly, and a major version upgrade has to be thoroughly tested before rolling it out on a production system. A fork won't be that different - if Linus switches the license tomorrow, most kernel devs will just move to the forked codebase.
        avar 16y ago
        A license change is a bad example. Nobody can switch the license for Linux. It has always been GPLv2-only, you'd need the approval of all contributors to the kernel to switch.
    - _delirium 16y ago
      That was something of a palace coup, though--- x.org wasn't really an upstart fork, but a secession of a large portion of the XFree86 core team. They also managed to get the X Consortium to hand over the old x.org domain to them and bless their version as the new official reference implementation, which cemented their new status.
- wazoox 16y ago
  Most distros patches their kernels, though.
- igravious 16y ago
  Like android did.
- madair 16y ago
  This explanation, while popular, always seems to willfully avoid taking social capital into account. "There's there door, you can leave any time" isn't an answer to the people who are invested in a community and actively seeking ways to ensure its success.
WilliamLP 16y ago
I don't think it's any coincidence at all that the most successful open source effort ever is the same one where there is the greatest force of personality in charge, who insists on maintaining top-down control. I'm not convinced that lateral organization between developers can ever work very well.
- sgift 16y ago
  Besides your hyperbole "most successful" I point to FreeBSD for a quite successful open source project which is not controlled top-down by one person. Apache httpd (or other apache projects) also come to mind.
  - jshen 16y ago
    I have no idea how FreeBSD is managed. Is it explained anywhere? I'd love to see how it compares to linux.
    - sgift 16y ago
      They gave a presentation with an accompanying paper a few years ago to explain how the project works: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4400856579609253323 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4400856579609253323 http://www.watson.org/~robert/freebsd/2006eurobsdcon/eurobsdcon2006-howfreebsdworks.pdf http://www.watson.org/~robert/freebsd/2006eurobsdcon/eurobsd...
    - kunley 16y ago
      There's a Core Team reelected each 2 years. Btw it just changed: http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=11461+0+/usr/local/www/db/text/2010/freebsd-announce/20100718.freebsd-announce http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=11461+0+/usr/lo... Btw, they have an excellent practice of quarter reports, here's the latest: http://www.freebsd.org/news/status/report-2010-04-2010-06.html http://www.freebsd.org/news/status/report-2010-04-2010-06.ht... I wish every opensource community had such clean summary of what they do.
  - jpablo 16y ago
avar 16y ago
The problem is that ARM is a licensable architecture, so there are lots of minor variations in sub-architectures. The companies maintaining these have no motivation to consider the problem of maintaining /all/ of these, they're happy to basically copy/paste some other code until their CPU work. Linus is saying that that's not going to work anymore, that they're going to have to come up with a way to consolidate their codebases.
- _delirium 16y ago
  That's probably the right solution, but it's a hard problem. NetBSD is probably the kernel that goes to the most effort to make clean, modular, orthogonal abstractions across hardware families and components, but it took them a lot of design effort up front, and continual policing of the abstraction boundaries and debugging of weird variants to make things actually work that way.
moolave 16y ago
Like Windows, Facebook, and others; it is the platform that makes Linux scalable. With that being, we'd like to create a platform for other developers to collaborate and develop their own.
albertzeyer 16y ago
Of course there is also a limit in our time about how much the kernel community can grow. That limit probably increases somewhat asymptotically to the human population. The actual kernel community size will probably increase slower, though. I think that increase is lower than the increase of how development in IT will simplify things. I.e., if my assumption stays true, there wont be any problem.

82 points by jpablo 16y ago

People use Linus' kernel version because of his track record. Don't like it? Fork it. The day Linus starts failing miserably is the day another mainline will emerge, and everyone will switch to that. Nothing here to worry about.

blueberry 16y ago
There might be comparable forks to Linux out there right now. Does anyone switch? No. Linux is the windows of Unices. You can't dethrone it just by coming up with a better fork.
- derefr 16y ago
  There's a difference between being slightly better than something that's still satisfactory, and being good in comparison to something that's no longer satisfactory. Look at X11: everyone used XFree86, even though forks were possible—until they decided to go in a direction people didn't like. Then people started using X.Org pretty damned fast.
  - blueberry 16y ago
    While I agree with what you are saying, your analogy is not completely accurate. Switching GUI is nowhere near switching the kernel in terms of risk and the hassle that might come with the change. The main reasons for inertia are the linux servers and the development stack that's built on top of linux servers. Most deployed Linuces have neither X.Org nor XFree86 installed on them.
    - nzmsv 16y ago
      The kernel is already evolving constantly, and a major version upgrade has to be thoroughly tested before rolling it out on a production system. A fork won't be that different - if Linus switches the license tomorrow, most kernel devs will just move to the forked codebase.
      - avar 16y ago
        A license change is a bad example. Nobody can switch the license for Linux. It has always been GPLv2-only, you'd need the approval of all contributors to the kernel to switch.
  - _delirium 16y ago
    That was something of a palace coup, though--- x.org wasn't really an upstart fork, but a secession of a large portion of the XFree86 core team. They also managed to get the X Consortium to hand over the old x.org domain to them and bless their version as the new official reference implementation, which cemented their new status.
wazoox 16y ago
Most distros patches their kernels, though.
igravious 16y ago
Like android did.
madair 16y ago
This explanation, while popular, always seems to willfully avoid taking social capital into account. "There's there door, you can leave any time" isn't an answer to the people who are invested in a community and actively seeking ways to ensure its success.

WilliamLP 16y ago

I don't think it's any coincidence at all that the most successful open source effort ever is the same one where there is the greatest force of personality in charge, who insists on maintaining top-down control. I'm not convinced that lateral organization between developers can ever work very well.

sgift 16y ago
Besides your hyperbole "most successful" I point to FreeBSD for a quite successful open source project which is not controlled top-down by one person. Apache httpd (or other apache projects) also come to mind.
- jshen 16y ago
  I have no idea how FreeBSD is managed. Is it explained anywhere? I'd love to see how it compares to linux.
  - sgift 16y ago
    They gave a presentation with an accompanying paper a few years ago to explain how the project works: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4400856579609253323 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4400856579609253323 http://www.watson.org/~robert/freebsd/2006eurobsdcon/eurobsdcon2006-howfreebsdworks.pdf http://www.watson.org/~robert/freebsd/2006eurobsdcon/eurobsd...
  - kunley 16y ago
    There's a Core Team reelected each 2 years. Btw it just changed: http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=11461+0+/usr/local/www/db/text/2010/freebsd-announce/20100718.freebsd-announce http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=11461+0+/usr/lo... Btw, they have an excellent practice of quarter reports, here's the latest: http://www.freebsd.org/news/status/report-2010-04-2010-06.html http://www.freebsd.org/news/status/report-2010-04-2010-06.ht... I wish every opensource community had such clean summary of what they do.
- jpablo 16y ago

avar 16y ago

The problem is that ARM is a licensable architecture, so there are lots of minor variations in sub-architectures. The companies maintaining these have no motivation to consider the problem of maintaining /all/ of these, they're happy to basically copy/paste some other code until their CPU work. Linus is saying that that's not going to work anymore, that they're going to have to come up with a way to consolidate their codebases.

_delirium 16y ago
That's probably the right solution, but it's a hard problem. NetBSD is probably the kernel that goes to the most effort to make clean, modular, orthogonal abstractions across hardware families and components, but it took them a lot of design effort up front, and continual policing of the abstraction boundaries and debugging of weird variants to make things actually work that way.

moolave 16y ago

Like Windows, Facebook, and others; it is the platform that makes Linux scalable. With that being, we'd like to create a platform for other developers to collaborate and develop their own.

albertzeyer 16y ago

Of course there is also a limit in our time about how much the kernel community can grow. That limit probably increases somewhat asymptotically to the human population. The actual kernel community size will probably increase slower, though. I think that increase is lower than the increase of how development in IT will simplify things. I.e., if my assumption stays true, there wont be any problem.