Some notes from the Collaboration Summit

“Your editor has just returned from the Linux Foundation’s
annual Collaboration Summit, held in San Francisco. LFCS is a
unique event; despite becoming more developer-heavy over the years,
it still pulls together an interesting combination of people from
the wider Linux ecosystem. The following article is not intended to
be a comprehensive report from the summit; it is, instead, a look
at a few of the more interesting thoughts that came from there.

“Graybeards

“As has seemingly become traditional, your editor moderated a
panel of kernel developers (James Bottomley, Christoph Hellwig,
Greg Kroah-Hartman, and Andrew Morton, this year). We discussed a
wide range of topics, but the subject that caught the attention of
the wider world was the “graybeards” question. As a result, we’ve
been treated to a number of lengthy discussions on just why the
kernel is no longer attracting energetic young developers.

“The only problem is: the kernel doesn’t really have that
problem. Every three-month development cycle involves well over
1000 developers, a substantial portion of whom are first-time
contributors. Nearly 20% of these contributors are working on their
own time, because they want to. There does not appear to be a
problem attracting developers to the kernel project; indeed, if
anything, the problem could be the reverse: the kernel is such an
attractive project that it gets an order of magnitude more
developers than just about anything else. Your editor has heard it
said in the past that Linux as a whole might be better off if some
of those developers were to devote a bit more time to user-space
projects, most of which would be delighted to have them.”

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