Linus must step aside

OpenSolaris
Solaris
Have you noticed that company founders or leaders often give up their pivotal role in a company that they have founded or been instrumental in leading? They either step aside or are forced out. Why is this? Because, in order for the company to continue to make progress and grow, they need to step aside. The smart ones recognize this - the dumb ones..... oh well.

So lets examine this phenomenon. The people we are talking about usually share the following character traits: They are brilliant, very talented, visionary and very demanding to work for. These character traits are what makes them different and allows them to create a company or product that others are incapable of. Those are the upsides. But there are corresponding downsides.

They are usually a royal pain in the ask to work with. Highly opinionated, very judgmental and apt to be very stubborn. They can also be inflexible. Again the smart ones recognize their weaknesses and surround themselves with other talented folk who help to balance out their personalities. It's not uncommon to find company partners with very different personalities and styles. And the dumb ones ... well no one can possibly be as smart or as talented as they are, and there's nothing wrong with their personalities anyway - so why even bother "playing well with others"!

So here's my point: Linus Torvalds must step aside and let Linux flourish. Linux has reached the personal limitations of Linus - it's creator and mentor. It's currently limited by the mental boundries and personality of its founder. Oh and yes - it appears the Linus does not recognize this problem and does not understand, that he has to step aside.

Lets take look at a serious limitation of Linux (the OS) which is a direct result of the limitations of Linus: Lack of a stable kernel API. According to Linus - having rigid APIs would limit the creativity of the kernel developers. Well ... yes it would, but it would also bring some decipline to the kernel code and it would allow a driver developer to deliver a device driver that does not have to be re-written every time the APIs change. It would also stop hundreds of developers from constantly rewriting and retesting their code every time the APIs change. It would also force the kernel developers to think with their minds and not with their keyboards!

But is this doable? Can the kernel APIs remain stable and not stifle developer creativity? Answer: Yes and yes. Look at Solaris 10 and the DTrace facility. Over 40,000 tracepoints in the kernel with negligible impact on performance, and yet, the tens of thousands of lines of code that I've written, going back to Solaris 2.5 and earlier, still run on Solaris 10 without any changes! And the same code runs on SPARC and Solaris x86 - with just a simple recompile. Time is money - and just think of the dollars involved by not having to constantly rewrite and retest Solaris based code.

On the flipside Linux has one thing going for it that Solaris does not have - a vibrant and active volunteer "army" of developers. But that's about to change when OpenSolaris goes live later this year. I'm a member of the OpenSolaris Pilot program and it's interesting and exciting to be perusing the crown jewels of Sun ... Solaris source code. Just think of it; you're looking at the fruits of the labors of hundreds of man years of effort from some of the most talented developers on the planet. Awesome.

So step aside Linus - or be run over by the OpenSolaris juggernaut.