Nothing much would happen, really. As portrayed by tech-media Linus is the main man behind Linux, but for anyone who would even casually follow the LKML, "Linu

Nothing much would happen, really. As portrayed by tech-media Linus is the main man behind Linux, but for anyone who would even casually follow the LKML, "Linux" is merely Linus' Linux. If Linus were to cease development, distributions would probably gravitate towards another Linux tree. There is no shortage of trees maintained by very qualified long-term developers who are trusted to keep everything in working order. They're just not as much in the general spotlight as Linus. Even if different distributors would lean towards different trees, features and patches would be equalised by third parties and another main tree would establish itself as "Linux."