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Is there a way to fund linux kernel development as a community?
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this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2025
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The thing about the kernel in particular is it's already mostly about money. With very few exceptions most maintainers are employed by someone, even just the Linux foundation, to work on the kernel full time. There's very little community involvement outside of the random patches here and there that community members submit. I think what OP is getting at is it would be nice if there was a community sponsored maintainer so it wasn't all just corporate employees but that likely means providing financial compensation.
And a change in project structure. As of now there are Linux Torvalds and Greg KH for the broader picture. Everyone else is concerned with one (or more) subsystems as far as I know. But they avoid messing with other people's areas of authority. So with the current project structure, we could appoint someone who deals with a specific field, like Wifi drivers. But I suppose we want more influence than just in one niche. There are a lot of topics of interest to the general public. So I don't see how that would align with the current project structure, either.