I kind of find Linus refreshing, although I'm not sure that would survive working directly with him. I think you're begging the question though: surely compatibility/ABI stability/performance trumps extreme security (for some values of 'extreme') for people and in cases where that is true. I happen to agree with you and Linus on this (baring a known exploit of an unpatched security bug), but that heirarchy is nowhere engraven in stone. If I always recompiled a critical codebase, I wouldn't care as much about ABI compatibility. If I'm always targetting a very specific platform, I don't care about compatibility. If I'm sitting on millions of unused cycles in a single-threaded realtime environment, I only care about performance to a certain point. If I'm working on software to control a medical device or nuclear reactor, my priorites around extreme security change.

You're right about that priority for the vast majority of the Linux user-base, but that's a characteristic of those users and developers, not of kernel software in general.

I have never even tried to read the kernel source, but I read the mailing lists - quite frequently. Linus runs a tight ship. It is funniest when someone does something that will break userspace.

He sets high standards. Meet them. I don't believe any forks have really done well. His method works, as abrasive as it may appear.

I've always found it weird that de Raadt is admired for being abrasive, and Torvalds is pilloried.

I've always wondered, if the grsec people are such believers of 'security above all else', why they just don't work with OpenBSD instead.

>I've always found it weird that de Raadt is admired for being abrasive, and Torvalds is pilloried.

It's because most of the people who get upset about Linus, have never heard of Theo. The ones who have, tend to think he's worse.

Lower hanging fruit and much larger potential client base in Linux. grsecurity are a business, after all.

Until someone says "literally everyone uses ssh, you should donate" then watch the excuses fly.

... because the linux kernel and git are awash with donations from users?

> de Raadt is admired for being abrasive

[citation needed]

Yeah that may have worked in the past when Linux was barely used by anyone. Now it is on a billion Android phones.

You can see why Google wants to move to its own OS when Linus has that attitude.

Besides, it's bullshit that you can't have ABI stability and security. It feels to me like Linus is still in the "I never write bugs" stage of denial, despite the evidence.