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To me on the other hand, it was obvious that he would be back as soon as 4.19 was released and the 4.20 merge window opened (the kernel release cycle has two ph

by cesarb 8y ago

To me on the other hand, it was obvious that he would be back as soon as 4.19 was released and the 4.20 merge window opened (the kernel release cycle has two phases, the merge window where new features and the bulk of the changes come in, and a phase where only bug fixes are supposed to come in). He took advantage of the time when the merge window was closed, since it's a less hectic period, and handed over maintenance to someone who already does something similar (Greg KH maintains the "stable" trees, which also accept only bug fixes).

weliketocode 8y ago
That's impressive foresight. Why did Linus make such fanfare about his departure if it was always intended to be so short?
- gnulinux 8y ago
  Because this was the first time in the history of linux this happened (a non-LTS release that wasn't by Linus himself) and Linus also wanted to take this as an opportunity to apologize for his behavior. Linux is a huge and very important project, so I'm not surprised this deal was a big deal and had a lot of coverage in HN or reddit.
- lucozade 8y ago
  > Why did Linus make such fanfare about his departure I'm not sure he did. AFAICT he wrote an email on the Linux mailing explaining that he was taking some time off and why. He also did an interview or two, presumably because he was asked. He probably realised that a portion of the internet would go bananas but that's not entirely his doing.
- cesarb 8y ago
  > That's impressive foresight. Not really, it was on the announcement email from Linus (https://lwn.net/Articles/764901/ https://lwn.net/Articles/764901/): "To tie this all back to the actual 4.19-rc4 release (no, really, this _is_ related!) I actually think that 4.19 is looking fairly good, things have gotten to the "calm" period of the release cycle, and I've talked to Greg to ask him if he'd mind finishing up 4.19 for me, so that I can take a break, and try to at least fix my own behavior." If Linus asked Greg to "finish 4.19 for him", it's predictable that he'd be back for 4.20.

by cesarb 8y ago

weliketocode 8y ago

That's impressive foresight. Why did Linus make such fanfare about his departure if it was always intended to be so short?

gnulinux 8y ago
Because this was the first time in the history of linux this happened (a non-LTS release that wasn't by Linus himself) and Linus also wanted to take this as an opportunity to apologize for his behavior. Linux is a huge and very important project, so I'm not surprised this deal was a big deal and had a lot of coverage in HN or reddit.
lucozade 8y ago
> Why did Linus make such fanfare about his departure I'm not sure he did. AFAICT he wrote an email on the Linux mailing explaining that he was taking some time off and why. He also did an interview or two, presumably because he was asked. He probably realised that a portion of the internet would go bananas but that's not entirely his doing.
cesarb 8y ago
> That's impressive foresight. Not really, it was on the announcement email from Linus (https://lwn.net/Articles/764901/ https://lwn.net/Articles/764901/): "To tie this all back to the actual 4.19-rc4 release (no, really, this _is_ related!) I actually think that 4.19 is looking fairly good, things have gotten to the "calm" period of the release cycle, and I've talked to Greg to ask him if he'd mind finishing up 4.19 for me, so that I can take a break, and try to at least fix my own behavior." If Linus asked Greg to "finish 4.19 for him", it's predictable that he'd be back for 4.20.