October 22nd, 2007
Is the Linux engine room overheating?
The release of Linux Kernel 2.6.23, discussed by Paula Rooney a few weeks ago, somehow got me into a Star Trek reverie.
All good Trekkies know by now that they’re casting a new Star Trek movie. British comedian Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead) has been chosen for the role of the young engineer Scotty, the part made famous by the late James Doohan.
I was thinking that, instead of being played as a Scot, he might this time be played by a Finnish-American, by one Linus Torvalds, currently of Portland, Oregon. (Go Blazers!)
Linus’ team is the engine room of the Linux operating system, and press reports are it’s fixing to blow. They’re giving it all they have, sir, but she wasn’t designed for these kinds of speeds.
Every decision, like the one to include Qumranet’s KVM hypervisor in the kernel, now has massive business implications. If code isn’t taken whole, as this code was, you still have controversies, as in the one concerning the new kernel’s scheduler.
Then there are questions of what to include and what not to include in each new iteration, how to prioritize bug fixes, the kinds of questions only big companies like Microsoft have had to answer in the past. Only, in this case, “self-interest” takes on a whole new meaning.
I have no criticism to offer of Linus here, no grand master plan for organizing the work. (The snarky answer is Visio.) Someone is bound to suggest that Linus was not trained for this kind of work, that he needs “adult supervision,” but that’s what they did to Steve Jobs back in the day and that didn’t work out.
My view is fate put Linus Torvalds here for a reason, and if he’s stuck in the main chair, if he’s Capt. Kirk rather than Scotty in fact, well then, I’m also a Levar Burton fan.
And he got his own ship, too.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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| 10/22/07
