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Did the Linux memory management maintainer "just quit"?
I came across this breathlessly written article, the beginning of which I will reproduce below, so as to not give its author any more engagement:
Title: "Linux Memory Had One Maintainer for 26 Years. He Just Quit. Now What?"
Subtitle: "One person held the code that runs every Android phone, cloud server, and supercomputer for 26 years. On April 21, he posted one message and then was silent."
Last non-paywalled sentence: "Two weeks later, at a developer summit in Zagreb, the memory management team tried to figure out how to replace him. They couldn’t."
This sounded very alarmist so I did a quick search (note: I'm not a Linux kernel expert or enthusiast by any measure). What I found seemed fairly tame:
Andrew Mortan's transition announcement: https://lwn.net/ml/all/20260421094216.8dfe14a8c62f2420fa5aace1@linux-foundation.org/
May 7 announcement of new maintainer: https://lwn.net/Articles/1070994/
Can someone familiar with the matter confirm that I was right to dismiss the original article as alarmist engagement bait, or is there reason for worry?
- throwaway54616 5mo agoIt's not surprising to see that he wants to retire. Andrew Morton is an absolute legend and deserves it. His work will be felt for a very long time, and his transition plan is also highly professional. All the best to him.
- kjs3 5mo agoWhat more do you need to know? The authoritative sources (I think lwn.net is, but I'm sure there's a ton of 'well, ackshually...' opinions) say he's unwinding his role, and that new people are picking it up. Seems pretty non-alarmist, non-brethless when you get out of the douchebag-sphere are do the basic research. But I guess you don't get clicks for "there's a change, it's being handled by adults, nothing to worry about".
- afr0ck 5mo agoDavid Hildenbrand, another very involved memory management legend is picking up the role. It will be fine.