[aSplash0fDerp]

A few points irk me on "the beginning of the end" conjecture in modern technology, rather than focusing on "as one door closes, another one opens" philosophies that keep it all going.

If I were to do coffee with Linus, I would tell him to fork the kernel and cleancode a kernel for the future (and take the reins), while letting the complexities of the current kernel continue to flourish in its present form (possibly seen as letting the rope go in the middle of a heated tug-of-war, which needs to happen on a public stage more often).

The "in between the lines story" on Linux over the years looks like [they] have been thrust into a role of placating the miserable, instead of writing brilliant code (its happening outside of tech too).

As far as switching gears to salaried maintainers, OSS should start an ISP (core function) similar to AOL (maybe aspergers online) and be a HUB for accessing the fruits of their labor. It would be like bringing the earthlink/mindspring 110% support model back to life (a reputation for being stewards of all open tech, in addition to top notch support).

Just having an ad-free network as an option would be worth the price of admission.

[Chyzwar]

Linux is successful because of: "WE DO NOT BREAK USERSPACE". It is Linus policy and work with community that made it most popular OS.

[yencabulator]

I believe the way to "next generation" while keeping the Linux userspace compatibility promise is basically gVisor running on a non-Linux kernel.

If it runs your container just as well, well, it's "Linux" as far as your app is concerned.

Case in point: 1% of Google Cloud Run could just as well run on Fuchsia today and you just wouldn't know. All you see is the inside of the gVisor sandbox -- yet at the same time it'll run pretty much any http-serving docker image.

(Of course, in the real world Linux rules because of its huge collection of drivers, filesystems, etc.)

[aSplash0fDerp]

Don't quote me on this, but I hear:

creeps like other users data

I think the next billion uses (not users) of the linux kernel will be on bare metal (or bare SOCs, wtcmb), so storage yes, but no networking or cloud required for optimal operations.

[aSplash0fDerp]

Well, with all of the swinging C.o.C. puns available, I'll tread safely and just point out L.T. never seemed to be about compromising quality over making people happy. Solid state does not have squeaky wheels.... Somethings amiss here....