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.
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.