Despite starting off "not big and professional like gnu" Linux now has trillions of dollars' worth of business going over IT infrastructure based on it. You bet

Despite starting off "not big and professional like gnu" Linux now has trillions of dollars' worth of business going over IT infrastructure based on it. You bet your ass it's a corporate funded behemoth now, not unpaid volunteer driven. And with corporate money comes corporate governance. Ouster of Linus as the chief maintainer is definitely on the table (though not likely to ve exercised here and now). I think Linus is being wishy-washy so as not to anger either the traditional "C-niles" currently holding the kernel together or the Rust group, who are likely a more prolific source of new development. The right call here is to tell Ted Ts'o and the other old guard that they need to adjust to the new Rust reality, because things like being explicit about object lifetimes will make the C code better as well as more compatible with what the Rust side wants to do. But he either doesn't want to do that or is looking for a diplomatic way to go about it.