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this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2024
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I just don't see that though. The Linux kernel is a hierarchy, with Linus at the top and a ton of incredibly skilled lieutenants (Greg K.H, Ted T'so, countless others) going down. It's an incredibly complex system and there's too much momentum.
What happens when we reach the point where it is practically impossible for companies like Yandex or Huawei to upstream patches? They are going to maintain their own trees, and those kernels will ship on millions of consumer devices.
That's what happens already with things like Android. The difference is that those companies are just tacking on their additional bits to make their stuff work, but they're not actually driving the architecture and design of the overall system.
Like if tomorrow the Linux kernel all decided to make a radical change to a major subsystem, they'd have to cope with it, or go it alone. Realistically everyone is going to adapt. They're never going to be the ones able to dictate how a system is designed, because they're downstream of where all the development actually happens. If that makes sense. My point is that an actual fork is when they diverge radically and start building things themselves that make significant changes to the architecture that are distinct and different from upstream
hard and soft forks are both forks. tradeoff of effort vs. autonomy.
There's also the possibility of a complete rewrite. You can either keep the same syscall API and ABI or have your own with a translation layer for compatibility. I think OpenHarmony does something like this, having a base microkernel and compat layers for Linux and Android.
I suspect China is going to see this and dump a shitton of money into accelerating OpenHarmony or projects like it.