He literally wrote Linux.

Since it started as his personal project he was the leader from the beginning. And since he turned out to be a capable leader and never got bored and left there was never any reason to take away that authority as it skyrocketed in popularity.

Basically, he's King because he founded the Kingdom.

The trouble a successor King would have is they could never have that kind of legitimacy, so some kind of more "Democratic" structure (self-appointed electors) is the most likely follow up.

I think that we should ask Darl McBride and the former SCOX team to take over!

Does Sealand even exist anymore?

If the successor is another benevolent dictator then we're looking at a monarchy, and it's a dynastic succession.

If he names a successor, especially beforehand, then the community gets a veto, and if the candidate passes they can probably take the reigns when Linus leaves.

If he doesn't name a successor then you get a bunch of claimants, each arguing for their legitimacy to the throne.

If one wins the argument they can still succeed him, but there's a serious risk of fragmentation (long term forks) or simple infighting.

If you want a benevolent dictator (King) you need to give them maximum legitimacy, and that means naming the successor early.

Nope, the Kingdom is the project with all the relationships and developers attached.

As I said, unless someone is specifically endorsed by Linus (and maybe not even then) I'm not sure anyone has the legitimacy to succeed him as benevolent dictator.

In either case, the trouble with a pile of forks is people start wasting time with divided efforts, porting patches back and forth between forks, and infighting.

Hopefully one project becomes dominant, but it's not assured, and there's a risk of long term fragmentation.

Establishing something before he leaves is far preferable.

Honestly it's kind of a monarchy. And that makes his approach dangerous.

There's a benevolent overlord (King) who rules for life. And while the King is strong everything is pretty stable.

But the moment the King is gone you either have a strong designated heir lined up, or there's a succession crisis. And that leads to all sort of complications up to and including a civil war (fork).

The fact is that Linus is still King, and if he needs to designate a successor. Either the next King, or a Debian style election system.

My guess is he's thinking something Debian-like after him, because there's no one else with the cred to be dictator for life, and a more Democratic Debian style system is the only thing that could undercut his current authority.

People on the right like to claim that fascism (Nazis) are actually communist and therefore left wing.

They're half right.

Communists, when they get in power, become far right fascists.

The trouble is that left wing ideologies are built on justice and fairness, while right wing ideologies are built on law and order.

Even if the communists are interested in justice and fairness at the start, the moment they get their hands on a single party state they become obsessed with law and order to stay in charge and devolve into authoritarian fascists.

That's why after the fall of the Berlin wall you heard all the people from former Soviet countries talking about Communism's lies, because the far left rhetoric didn't match the far right government.

You didn't get the same complaints about the former citizens of fascist governments, sure the Nazis tried to hide the holocaust, but they never felt the need to lie about most of what they were doing because they were delivering the far right agenda they promised.

And that's why Putin, former Communist and a far right leader by any measure, found it so easy to take Russia to the far right. Because it's the same ideology they lived under in the USSR.

Exactly. Ever see the front page of Slashdot without an adblocker?

When CmdrTaco introduced ads, they were at least RELEVANT to the site... ThinkGeek, etc... Now we get Temu shit.

Welcome to how the rest of the world lives.

Every company I have ever worked for is, "We pay you $X, you work on project Y." I've never received part of the profits from the sales of my work. Unless you count my salary.

Systemd says hello.

SCO OpenDesktop 2.0 came on 44 3.5" floppies (circa '91 or so). But that pretty much included everything. System V, X, development system (SCO's port of MSC 5)...

Elon Musk Says Grok Will Be Fixed After Chatbot Sided With Sam Altman In Spat Over Potential OpenAI Lawsuit.

It must suck to work at xAI, you actually build a decent pretty LLM, and then your drugged out boss repeatedly getting pissed off when it calls out his bullshit and insists that you lobotomize it.

Are you sure you replied to the right comment?

By "myth" you mean confirmed fact?

App store rankings are an important part of the valuation for xAI.

Don't forget he sold a lot of Tesla stock to buy Twitter. So much that he had to poach a bunch of Tesla talent and GPUs in order to build xAI, then have it buy Twitter, then use Tesla to pump the valuation further by integrating Grok, all so he could get Tesla to buy xAI for a really inflated valuation and give him even more stock.

But if people aren't directed to download X and Grok in the App store then he won't get as much new Tesla stock as he wants.

Why would Tim Cook be so mean to Musk??