[phendrenad2]

> That's a pretty wild assertion and files in the face of the highly active kernel development process

No, OP is right. 99.9% of things added to the kernel in any given release are drivers (mostly for obscure server hardware that the average LKML lurker would never have access to). So while there's certainly active development, it's all centered around drivers, and the "kernel" part of the kernel are mostly stable (modulo the occasional greenfield project like eBPF). (Note that I said 99.9% of things added, I'm sure security patches make up a lot more than 0.01% of kernel patches).