Lab Notes

Linus on Linux Development

Linus Torvalds talks about the patch system that comprises Linux kernel development. It's interesting to me the way that open source and closed source development processes are similar, despite protestations from both sides. Our own closed source development process for production code (that is, imminent releases rather than early pre-release code, which has a somewhat more relaxed approach) includes a patch system where each submission is thoroughly reviewed before being incorporated into the main code stream. What's more, it's a single person who is the final arbiter of whether a patch is release-worthy. Regardless of whether a project is open source or not, there are best practices to be followed. Hopefully — since that final code arbiter is me — the burnout that Linus talks about is still a few years away (of course, having having only two other contributors rather than two thousand helps).