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What happens when Linus dies/retires?
(lemmy.nz)
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this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2023
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Nothing. Linus doesn't personally do coding on the kernel, he has a team who do that and he oversees it and makes the hard decisions.
There are others who will take his place and the work will continue.
If somehow the entire kernel team shut down, Google, Samsung or some other large corporation would take it over and continue development because at this point many, many, many servers, phones, smart devices, iot, and other appliances rely on the Linux kernel to function.
It simply cannot be left to die.
Even that is not really the truth. There are dozens and dozens of teams that actually do the development, then there are people who coordinate and maintain certain parts of the kernel, merge in patches and make decisions. And then there's Linus who does coordinate these people.
And most likely Greg K-H will take over the position that Linus has right now. He has been one of the most active maintainers and is probably "the number 2" behind Linus.