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Comment by chrisco255

2 years ago

> You won't get a new feature into the Linux networking stack without discussing and reviewing it with the network maintainers, for example

Sure, there are trusted experts in open source development too. Of course you have to get your PR discussed to get it checked in! How would the system be resilient to bugs or hacks or scope creep if not? Of course, you're always welcome to fork it and start your own thing.

There was a 2017 report on Linux Kernel Dev [1], it states that "Since 2005 and adoption of Git DVCS, 15,637 developers from over 1,400 companies have contributed to the Linux kernel. Since last year, over 4,300 devs from more than 500 companies have contributed to the kernel. Of these, 1,670 contributed for the first time, or about a third of the contributors."

That's not a centrally controlled and planned engineering project. Microsoft Windows is centrally controlled. Apple's macOS is centrally controlled. What are your odds of getting a kernel feature added to either of those unless you work at those companies? Zero.

[1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/whos-building-linux-in-2017/