" Corbet began by outlining reasons why participation
in the kernel development process matters - the kernel, he said,
was the core of the Linux system and therefore should continue to
be the best it could.
"Participation was the way by which people could get the kernel
to meet their needs; complaining from outside would probably get
something of a hearing but those on the inside were more capable of
getting their needs met as they could often end up making the very
changes that they needed, he said.
"Corbet pointed out that maintaining code outside the mainline
kernel was expensive; if code made it to this kernel, the one that
is handled by Torvalds, then the chances of it being in every
distribution were very good."