Linux Foundation has a research division who do research on several things.
There are also other factors too that decide the direction, but usually there is lots of discussion and testing first. When Rust came out Linux tried and said it is not ready yet because he found several drawbacks, I speculate he did the same, some practical tests, then more research, discussions and now he adopts new standards.
Linus used to be a benevolent dictator for life (BDFL), but in the past years he took some time to reflect on some shitty behavior of his, and delegate more power to the other maintainers. He’s still the grand maintainer of things, but certainly treats outside opinions/patches more gently than before.
Just for clarification, updating to modern C is not at all a controversial change. It was delayed for decades due to dependency on older GCC versions, but now that this technical concern has been solved, it’s a very consensual change that will enable much better maintainability of the kernel.
How is the direction to be taken for kernel development decided? Is Linus something like the CEO of the Linux Foundation?
Linux Foundation has a research division who do research on several things.
There are also other factors too that decide the direction, but usually there is lots of discussion and testing first. When Rust came out Linux tried and said it is not ready yet because he found several drawbacks, I speculate he did the same, some practical tests, then more research, discussions and now he adopts new standards.
Linus used to be a benevolent dictator for life (BDFL), but in the past years he took some time to reflect on some shitty behavior of his, and delegate more power to the other maintainers. He’s still the grand maintainer of things, but certainly treats outside opinions/patches more gently than before.
Just for clarification, updating to modern C is not at all a controversial change. It was delayed for decades due to dependency on older GCC versions, but now that this technical concern has been solved, it’s a very consensual change that will enable much better maintainability of the kernel.