As the core Members of Linux approach the twilight of their lives, no successor to system maintenance faces a crisis

原文标题：《 Linus：我们都老了，但 Linux 维护后继无人  》

Original authors: Nuclear Coke, Tina

& have spent

At the Online Open Source Summit and Embedded Linux conference this week, Linux creator Linus Torvalds talked about the challenges of finding future maintainers for open source operating systems. Torvalds, who has stopped giving keynote speeches in recent years, spoke remotely with Dirk Hohndel, chief open source officer of VMware.

The discussion quickly raised an uncomfortable question: Where will the Linux project go as the current generation of maintainers ages? "We as a community have to think about generational change," Hohndel said of the generation managers like Torvalds. "What do we do then?"

VMware's Dirk Hohndel (left) speaks with Linus Torvalds during the open Source Summit online

Torvalds responds that the participants in the Linux kernel community are not too old. "A lot of the new people are under 50, and they're doing the bulk of the development right now," he says. "Of course, we're getting older compared to people in their 30s. The good news is that those of us who are early members of long-term projects can still do maintenance and management work."

It takes time for maintainers to build trust within the community, Torvalds points out, "not just from other maintainers, but from all code contributors... it definitely takes time." Torvalds stressed that "it has been proved that maintainers really bad looking. Just start to take over the kernel maintenance work, will always stick to it. Every day can't relax. We'll have to read email and reply, anyway have to stay there. And the maintenance work was one of those requirements is not low, but demand side of the post."

"We really don't have enough maintainers. We have a lot of people who can write code and handle some of the maintenance, but it's hard to find people who can absorb other people's code contributions and pull it all together upstream. That's one of the big problems we have right now."

In addition, the Linux kernel is mostly written in C. To that end, Hohndel asked, "Will C be replaced by GO and Rust, and will those of us who use C be like COBOL programmers today in 20 years?" Torvalds's response was, "C language still is one of the world's ten big popular languages. But the specific choice of language will not cause too big effect to the kernel. Similar to the drivers, the kernel interface team is looking at a variety of language, believe that soon can do it. All in all, we will use a different model of Linux code, and C is absolutely not the only model options."

Top Linux developers are in their twilight years

The last generation of top programmers is certainly getting older, and Linus Torvalds himself is over 50 this year.

It's also true that the Linux community needs fresh blood. According to Amanda McPherson, vice President of marketing and Developer programs at the Linux Foundation, "The number of participants in the Linux project is at an all-time high, and over 8,000 people have contributed to the Linux kernel since 2005." But judging by the number of participants, the older Generation of Linux programmers is still the backbone of the project.

Jesus M Gonzalez-Barahona, one of the founders of Bitergia, a software development and analysis firm, has found that the proportion of new programmers has been declining year by year, when using "project time" as an "age" indicator for Linux kernel developers. The highest percentage of current participants, who typically joined the Linux community more than a decade ago, has declined in subsequent generations.

The Linux community is certainly aware of this problem.

In 2010, Greg Kroah-Harman, a senior Linux developer and Linux Driver project leader, noted at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit's kernel panel discussion that "the change at the top of the project was never successful."

James Bottomley, CTO for server virtualization at Parallels, also said "older contributors remain the mainstay of the program. Linux kernel development has been unable to pick up the REINS and after several years there is no telling how many of those early members there are left."

Andrew Morton, a Google software engineer and senior Linux kernel developer, concluded, "yes, we are getting older and less energetic, and it seems that the younger generation is not as enthusiastic about kernel development as the contributors were."

The Linux Foundation has been trying to solve problems for years. As one line of thought, the Linux Foundation is trying to attract more amateur programmers. McPherson added, "although Linux project record the number of participants, but we have been trying to attract new talent. And we basically reached consensus, lack of talent has become a Linux the biggest obstacle to achieve further growth. We hope that by LinuxCon build influence in the new generation of programmers, but it seems that too large, lead to a lot of people confuse LinuxCon is the developers as the center, or for the center with the system administrator/architect."

"Against the sky, against the earth, against the air" Linus  & have spent

Despite His undoubted talent, Linus Torvalds has become a controversial figure in the way he treats community participants.

Complaints about his behavior go back years. In 2013, Intel kernel developer Sarah Sharp called Torvalds' behavior unprofessional, saying that Torvalds "advocates physical intimidation and violence." Torvalds then accused Sharp of portraying himself as a victim to seek sympathy and not accepting any suggestion that he should change.

In a 2015 speech about Nvidia, Torvalds turned to a camera and said "So Nvidia Fuck you" and raised his middle finger.

At the end of 2015, Sarah Sharp announced her Closing a door. Sarah Sharp said at the time that over the past year or so she has been phasing out all of her community work, turning over maintenance of the USB 3.0 master controller driver and stepping down as kernel coordinator for the open source conference. She doesn't submit any patches or bug reports, and she doesn't write any Suggestions to the kernel mailing list. She claims that the interaction of the Linux kernel community is a "potentially toxic background radiation" full of sexism, verbal violence and disrespect.

Torvalds eventually realized that his actions would hurt the community. In 2018, he decided to leave and reflect on their own behavior, in the 4.19 - rc4 announcement, he wrote, "I will take some time to rest and seek help, to learn how to understand the emotions of others and make the appropriate response... I am not a person who could feel empathy for others and a lot of people are not surprised. Over the years, I misunderstood a lot of people, and I didn't realize I to judge how bad in some cases, this creates a professional environment, this is not very good."

Write it in the end & NBSP; & have spent

On August 7, the first Linux Journal to focus on the Linux kernel and its distributions announced its closure. The editor of the magazine said in a statement on its website that it was shutting down for good and had fired all its staff because of a funding failure. Many people choose Linux because it's open source and free. Free to use, but unwilling to pay or contribute. "Today it's a Linux magazine, tomorrow it could be Linux Mint or LibreOffice," someone commented at the time.

Today, Linux, the most popular operating system, runs on more than 2 billion devices and has become an integral part of human technology. It is hard to imagine the consequences of not being maintained.

Text link:https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/xyR8Af1vHxOwdIn6fwrKiA 

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