this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2023
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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I'd go a few levels deeper: the kernel development process seems to become more and more dysfunctional. Legacy code hindering innovation, bad people being bottlenecks and this absurdly ancient "send a patch via mail" process.
Currently, that's only sand in the gears, but if it gets worse, this could seriously threaten the future.
I'm 100% with this. It doesn't have to be on GitHub, but something like GitHub would really help. It's easy to create a fork, a PR, and get good reviews on relevant lines of code. With email, not so much. In my opinion, If email really was better, few folks would adopt a VCS like GitHub.
I mean, you could still have emails as the base layer, de facto it already is a well-defined protocol layer on top of SMTP, so why not slap a nice GUI on it and call it a day?
Sounds like GitHub 😁
Except not proprietary and solely owned by a FAANG company.
You mean something like https://patchwork.kernel.org?
What the heck even is the point of using email for this?
It's established and vendor/platform independent.
I get the idea, but come on, the inventor of git, a distributed VCS is unable to have an actually distributed development?
Linus wrote git before anything like github existed, and the best way to do it was email. They just haven't switched away from using email
Weird.
I don't see a problem with it. I don't know what tools you use, but the current process certainly isn't ancient. Even if I use GitHub or something else, I still highly depend on my e-mail to actually know somebody published a patch and if I am supposed to review it. I don't have to use a GUI coupled with shitty UI decisions. E-mails are very simple in their own way and I don't find it ancient or bad.