"Linus Torvalds rarely makes appearances at conferences, and
it's even less common for him to get up in front of the crowd and
speak. He made an exception for LinuxCon Brazil, though, where he
and Andrew Morton appeared in a question and answer session led by
Linux Foundation director Jim Zemlin. The resulting conversation
covered many aspects of kernel development, its processes, and its
history.
"Jim started things off by asking: did either Linus or Andrew
ever expect Linux to get so big? Linus did not; he originally wrote
the kernel as a stopgap project which he expected to throw away
when something better came along. Between the GNU Project and
various efforts in the BSD camp, he thought that somebody would
surely make a more capable and professional kernel. Meanwhile,
Linux was a small thing for his own use. But, in the end, nothing
better ever did come along. [Andrew Morton] Andrew added that, as a
kernel newbie (he has "only" been hacking on it for ten years), he
has less of a long-term perspective on things. But, to him, the
growth of Linux has truly been surprising.
"How, Jim asked, do they handle the growth of the kernel? Andrew
responded that, as the kernel has grown, the number of developers
has expanded as well. Responsibility has been distributed over
time, so that he and Linus are handling a smaller proportion of the
total work. Distributors have helped a lot with the quality
assurance side of things. At this point, Andrew says,
responsibilities have shifted to where the kernel community
provides the technology, but others take it from there and turn it
into an actual product."
