Linus Torvalds: ARM Is an Upstanding Member of the Community

Linus Torvalds participated in an interesting panel, with Linux kernel maintainers Greg Kroah-Hartman, Sarah Sharp and Ted Ts'o, and reached some interesting conclusions.

The panel gathered at LinuxCon North America 2012, under the auspices of The Linux Foundation, in a discussion moderated by James Bottomley.

The guests were asked some direct and interesting questions, but as usual, Linus Torvalds was the one who provided the entertainment. In front of an audience of almost 100 Linux kernel maintainers and developers, the panel debated some topics that are not usually approached in such gatherings.

The moderator asked a question regarding “the bus problem.” A lot of people maintaining and developing the Linux kernel have thought about “throwing” Linux under the bus, mostly after receiving complaints about patches. What would developers do next if that were really the case?

Linus Torvalds answered in his usual joking manner, “I always give the same answer, I won't care.” He then went on to say that Linux had a huge development community and that it was as strong as ever.

The father of Linux was also asked if there were still things that get him exited. He gave an example of a major issue with the kernel that had been resolved in an exemplary manner.

“What makes me happy is when some painful process issue gets resolved. For me, over the last year, it's been ARM who from a constant headache in every single merge window has become an upstanding citizen in the Linux community”.

He also explained that he would even ignore a merge window and immediately put out a new release candidate if someone removed 1000 lines of code, instead of adding.

The discussion between the Kroah-Hartman, Sarah Sharp, Linus Torvalds and Ted Ts'o is really interesting, mostly because we get too see the people behind the Linux kernel and we get to understand their motivations. Be sure to check out the entire video.