Definitely, go ahead and put your project out there. Take a step back from the nuts and bolts. Describe on a web page what the project does, along with areas you know need improvement. Heck, go ahead and set up a bug tracker and put your known problems in. Make it easy for people to understand the value of your project, and what needs done.

Umm, how about the people Linus mentioned that would carry on his work once he dies? Greg Kroah-Hartman, and some of the other maintainers would be excellent candidates.

Agreed. But delaying the work doesn't make it go away. It will be there when he gets back, which means more work to do for the release, or features get delayed. Decentralizing would ensure the project can move forward, regardless of Linus's schedule.

It seems strange to me that with all the decentralization in software (ex. git) that Linus remains the sole gatekeeper for what goes or doesn't go in the kernel. Splitting up the responsibility seems like it would be infinitely more logical. I mean now, if Linus goes on a trip, he either has to work on the release while on vacation, or delay it till he gets back. Seems like a large burden for one person to bear.

This is becoming a more general problem with society. As people spend more time online, they get their social acceptance needs from other people online. Unfortunately, some people see the internet as a place where they don't need to filter themselves, and can cause harm to others. I'm not saying Linus means to hurt others, just that we all should remember there's a live person on the other end of the email.

Exactly... dvcs doesn't stop you from pushing into a branch on the "server" periodically. In fact, it encourages it.

I'm much more likely to keep stuff out of CVS/SVN for much longer periods of time, because the branching process is so much more time consuming.

Obviously, some programming constructs are a lot more sugary that others, and have been put in simply to provide a work around so that you don't have to use goto's. One would probably never write a for or while loop using only goto's, but compare an "Exit While" statement from VB.Net, and compare it to the GoTo equivalent. There's isn't much difference in one being more complicated than the other. The Exit While statement isn't even necessary, unless you have some weird fear of GoTo's, there's no reason to even use it, or for it to be there in the first place.

It's your definition that goes against common sense. Applying electricity within certain paremeters is painful but not physically damaging so no torture. Or spinning a drill bit within millimiters of your eye - again not torture.

I schmell WOOSH.

exactly. sure it's frustrating for an implementation of a good idea to take a really long time, but in turn that usually ensures the implementation of a bad idea will be thoroughly vetted and exposed before its adopted (with a few notable exceptions). i'd much rather risk the eternally promised "end of the internet" with the notion that someone would likely provide a fix before it gets to that point than i would risk having some person or company "in charge". we see how far that gets us with basically every other industry - nowhere. maybe i'm missing something obvious but what other global technology works as well with as little global oversight? it's easier from a "regulation" standpoint for me to email a home video to antarctica than it is to make a phone call to europe. just my 2 cents, ymmv, etc.

You claim a user's post to be invalid simply due to his ideology? Rupublican and Democrat are terms that describe political affiliation, not ideological beleif. Some on the far right may not see moderate Republicans as being paticularly conservative, just as some far left liberals may not see Blue-Dog Democrats as being paticularly liberal. Please, if you're going to debate, do it on the substance of a person's issue rather than attacking him on the basis of his perceived ideology.

Saying 'This person's post is innaccurate because I think he's a far-right liberatarian' belies an certain level of ignorance on your own part, regardless of your ideology.

except it's a bit reversed: businesses are the ones suing :D

Mr Crichton's points in that book are still pretty much valid, though.

We're talking about something a bit more critical than online text messaging for the facebook generation.