2.6 is coming, and Andrew Morton, a modest, humble, approachable, and very capable system software developer is leading the charge. Hand-picked by Linus Torvalds for the task, Morton talks about the next production kernel, the kernel development process, and what would happen if SCO won its case against IBM.
Just a short time ago on July 10, Linus Torvalds posted the following message to the kernel developers’ mailing list: “OK. This is it. We (Andrew and me) are going to start a ‘pre-2.6′ series, where getting patches in [to the kernel] is going to be a lot harder. This is the last 2.5.x kernel, so take note.” In other words, the 2.6 kernel is coming.
The “Andrew” Linus referred to is none other than Andrew Morton, a longtime system software developer, and a significant contributor to the Linux kernel since 2000. Most recently, Andrew has been enhancing the file system and virtual file system, maintaining Linux’s memory management system, and addressing general issues with the I/O subsystem.
Perhaps more importantly, Morton has also been the conduit for a vast number of contributed features and changes for the 2.5 kernel, which are first integrated and tested in Morton’s tree before being sent ahead to Torvalds. Of course, now that Morton has been tasked with the release of 2.6, those changes will remain with him and others, while Torvalds starts on the next development version of Linux, 2.7.
And thanks to the Open Source Development Lab (OSDL), the leading advocate of Linux in enterprise computing, Morton, like Torvalds, will be able to focus full-time on his new task. In early July, two weeks after Torvalds joined OSDL as a fellow, OSDL announced that it would also…
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