Linux

Think we all can agree that the only sensible choise would to convert to Tempel OS...

GNU will spring their plan into motion for world domination, and send anyone who has said Linux and not GNU/Linux to GNUlag

We will switch to GNU/Hurd.

Then we will plug a USB device and remember that Hurd doesn't support that yet.

Clone him

We're actually on the 10th Linus now, so the next one will be LinuXI

A number of candidates will create their own forks and there will be a long Game of Thrones style war between different factions. After couple of weeks each distro will choose the fork they will make the default one and people will split into warring factions. After that we will enter a nuclear winter style period lasting couple of years during which 90% of post on Lemmy will be just shitposting the rival forks. After a decade or two of backstabbing, dirty politics and other drama new dictator will be selected and all will be back to normal.

His firstborn son will take over as Linus II, as is tradition.

By then GNU/Hurd will be ready lmao

Linus is getting old and its time to pick his replacement.

And its you! Congratulations! I hope your ready

Nothing. Linus doesn't personally do coding on the kernel, he has a team who do that and he oversees it and makes the hard decisions.

There are others who will take his place and the work will continue.

If somehow the entire kernel team shut down, Google, Samsung or some other large corporation would take it over and continue development because at this point many, many, many servers, phones, smart devices, iot, and other appliances rely on the Linux kernel to function.

It simply cannot be left to die.

We've all agreed that when he dies it would be disrespectful to keep using Linux so we'll pack it up and switch to Windows from them on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor is a thing that any GOOD project or IT department considers. How many of your staff can you afford to lose if they all happen to be travelling in the same bus, on their way to eat at the same place for lunch when an asteroid inevitably punches through said bus and/or diner.

'Hit by an asteroid' is a little unrealistic. Sentenced to prison for 15 to Life has happened in the Open Source community at least once before. The project I linked to had a Bus Factor of about one. It's now 'old code using outdated APIs' and is considered obsolete.

I've personally seen legal and criminal issues for a single individual cripple IT departments before, meaning their bus factor was also way too low. I've been on trips that have been rudely interrupted by screaming executives when I came down out of the mountains into cell range because I was the only bus factor left on certain systems. Natural disaster, such as hurricanes, wildfires, and floods are very serious existential threats to even the largest of organizations.

Since Linux seems to be a good project, I can't imagine that the discussion hasn't been had, in public or in private. Millions of individuals and dozens upon dozens of big corporations depend on Linux, Open source and otherwise. If the bus comes for core maintainers or project leaders we have at least SOME backup.

There are plenty of other tech youtubers to watch.

The role of Linus being a stubborn decision maker will be handed over to a competent close one to Linus. He is not letting any of the "sociopolitical" experts take over the tech role that Linux plays critical to servers, security users, militaries, governments and activists.

is there a Linus 2?

There was but Carmen Ortiz took care of that little problem, if you know what I mean 😉