Given Linus Torvalds's recent leave of absence from Transmeta to take a full-time position at OSDL to work on Linux kernel development, and with the approaching release of Linux 2.6, I thought now would be a good time to quiz Torvalds by email. As always, Torvalds was gracious and forthcoming in his replies.
NewsForge: Does the fact that you will now be working full-time on the kernel as the result of your move to OSDL mean you'll be working more hours per week on Linux, or does it mean you will be able to spend more time being a husband and father?
Torvalds: Well, it won't mean more hours per week on Linux than what I did lately, since I've been concentrating pretty much exclusively on Linux anyway. That was, after all, the reason for the move. So if somebody is expecting me to suddenly start churning out stuff much faster, they'll be disappointed. But it may be more reliable, in that I won't have some other projects that I need to work on.
NewsForge: One news report I read suggested that you will be turning 2.6 kernel maintenance over to Andrew Morton a lot earlier in the cycle than usual. Was that report accurate?
Torvalds: Yes. Historically I've turned things over after I'm happy with the thing, i.e. it takes a while. With Andrew, we've already been working pretty closely for the last few months anyway, so we're going to try a new approach: he'll be the maintainer from the very get-go, and I'll be as a co-maintainer.
We'll do it gradually, i.e. try to move him more and more into the maintenance position starting with the pre-releases (probably this week).
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