Saying “just fork it” is obviously disingenuous anyway. Linux is gigantic at this point and would be completely infeasible to maintain without a huge group of talented people and funding. He knows very well no one can just fork Linux in a meaningful way, just like you can’t just easily fork Chromium if you disagree with Google’s high level shitbaggery. Even MS threw in the towel on maintaining their own browser for the same reason.
Fair enough, Linux-libre is technically an example of a fork. That being said, that project has a very specific goal of just removing proprietary packages and blobs, it’s a lot more simple and direct to maintain. I don’t know that you could truly do such a thing with AI/LLM tainted code without a hard fork and essentially no longer merging in from upstream. Vim Classic is trying to this right now, and it is a lot more doable since that’s a much smaller project.
Saying “just fork it” is obviously disingenuous anyway. Linux is gigantic at this point and would be completely infeasible to maintain without a huge group of talented people and funding. He knows very well no one can just fork Linux in a meaningful way, just like you can’t just easily fork Chromium if you disagree with Google’s high level shitbaggery. Even MS threw in the towel on maintaining their own browser for the same reason.
So, is Linus just dictator-for-life? Does he have the final say on everything?
More or less, yes
I mean, pretty much yes, as far as I am aware.
I meam have you ever heard linus talk about other controversial topics? He is not one to give a fuck or mince words.
Linux-libre?
Fair enough, Linux-libre is technically an example of a fork. That being said, that project has a very specific goal of just removing proprietary packages and blobs, it’s a lot more simple and direct to maintain. I don’t know that you could truly do such a thing with AI/LLM tainted code without a hard fork and essentially no longer merging in from upstream. Vim Classic is trying to this right now, and it is a lot more doable since that’s a much smaller project.