Hot Take:
Every big project needs a Linus Torvalds, I don't mean a BDFL, I mean someone who takes no bullshit, you will do this correctly, you follow procedure or you piss off. Who will give leeway to new devs as they learn, but expects more from long term devs who know better
@pgronkievitz Maybe, but there's a lot of design by committee that goes on, a lot of projects don't really have that one person who has a guiding vision.
@BrodieOnLinux 100%, that would make so many projects much better and easier for new devs to start contributing to.
@Hyolobrika You need to understand your position, act humble, understand you're one of thousands of people sending emails, and know that things take time to reply to, but eventually get dealt with if it's not a stupid question.
@whalecoiner but then what will happen to the managers who manage the managers
@BrodieOnLinux Is that the reality of the man, from someone who actually works with him? As an outsider, my impression has always been that if I were to try contributing to Linux and made one tiny mistake, I could be publicly humiliated by the top dog, or probably anyone below him in the chain of command. The whole structure seems extremely unwelcoming and I've so far avoided making any contributions to the project as a result.
@fyberpunk I'd encourage you to delve into the LKML to get a good understanding of Torvalds, everything is publically archived. There are issues with kernel development like LKML etiquette, the confusing nature of dealing with a project of this scale, etc but long before your code ever reaches Torvalds unless you're trying to integrate a new system there's other maintainers you're dealing with
@BrodieOnLinux also being a BDFL I know this too well ...
@till I'm a fan of the BDFL model personally, I know it can have its issues in some cases and it's kind of hard to add one in after the start of the project. But having somebody with a vision who can keep things in check I think is almost always a good thing.
@BrodieOnLinux Man really said "every big project needs a good leader" and labeled it a hot take
@BrodieOnLinux counterpoint: Unix was not developed that way and we don’t work that way on BSD variants.
Large projects need coherent vision and consistent processes but there’s more than one way to do it and Linus’s approach is toxic.
@MartyFouts When you say Unix do you mean the original Research Unix, or the countless other Unix operating systems that were developed.
@Hyolobrika @BrodieOnLinux Give leeway to new devs, many large projects don’t do this and often discourage new devs. Some large projects also are full of shit and sometimes they just need to take no bs.
@BrodieOnLinux@mstdn.social Most linux projects will default to design by comittee because this is the default for small open source projects
ofc back in the 90's there was less people to do these sorta projects, and now the "this is how it's being done" is mostly done by people like microsoft or redhat.
@Jessica I'd say it's sort of the opposite, it's the natural state of a project to have a single maintainer, in that state you're functionally a BDFL. Generally a project is started by one person to solve a problem they have. What happens from then on is they go design by committee, most people just don't have the time to run a project.
@BrodieOnLinux@mstdn.social okay I didn't think this through all that well
small projects are one person, medium projects are comittee, and then large projects are usually done via microsoft and such.
linux is an exception to the rule because it's still being ran by one person