The Soul of Barb's New Machine was creat 1145

From what I have gathered Linus is far more of a Social Democrat than most people understand. (Swedes have a word for that technocratic type : "Kraftsosse"). The ego in that setting takes a rather different form, but it is still present. I think this form of it confuses most anglo-saxon people who don't know this background. BTW: Linus does come from a pretty true-red family, but he has publicly disbuttociated himself from their politics, even before this became an issue with Linux.)

I see he works very hard to try to acheive a consensus around Linux; and so far he has been remarkably successful. There has been at least three incidents where Linux may have forked, but they all went back to the fold after in-chamber discussions.

This may be the reason some issues are non-issues for a time, and then go up on the table. Aggressive SMP was such a non-issue, but came on the table for 2.5-2.6 and they did a very good job of it.

"De-monolithing" the kernel has been such a non-issue too, and I suspect it comes on the table soon.

The thing about Linux is the sheer size of things. I think Linus has done a stellar job so far in the ancient art of cat-herding.

-- mrr