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From: Daniel Phillips <phillips@bonn-fries.net>
To: Neil Brown <neilb@cse.unsw.edu.au>
Subject: Re: The direction linux is taking
Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2002 12:07:37 +0100
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Cc: Rob Landley <landley@trommello.org>, Larry McVoy <lm@bitmover.com>,
        Benjamin LaHaise <bcrl@redhat.com>,
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On January 2, 2002 11:50 am, Neil Brown wrote:
> On Wednesday January 2, phillips@bonn-fries.net wrote:
> > 
> > Yes, that's all +5 insightful, except... what makes you think any one of the 
> > Linux core hackers is irreplaceable?  I know you didn't say that, but you
> > did say 'single point of failure', and it amounts to the same thing.
> 
> I think that the difference is that there is no planning to make sure
> that no-one is irreplaceable.

Right, it's like the difference between a planned economy and a capitalist
one.  People find their own niches in the Linux heirarchy.  Except for a few 
'official' maintainer positions there is nobody doing any assigning.  Surely 
there is some irony in this.

> Sure people can be replaced, but it
> might take a while.  A subsystem might be unmaintained (or
> under-maintained) for a while until some sucker^Wdeveloper puts their
> hand up.  That isn't a situation that a "fortune 500 bureaucracy"
> would be able to tolerate.  But we seem to cope.

Yep, we're just lucky ;)

--
Daniel
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