I disagree. Linux has reached critical mass, the biggest tech giants depend on it heavily and are the main contributors. If some new fancy subsystem, interface or syscall would benefit Google's workload, they will implement it and it gets merged since even of Google will be the only one using it, that automatically means it has millions of users. You come along with a not completely polished and thoroughly tested Lego mind storms usb driver for Linux today, you'd get laughed of the mailing list, because security and who will maintain that? I mean security is good and stuff, but Linux is a commercial product today and nothing a curious 16 yo can get involved with like in the early 2000s.
> It won't be tomorrow, but it will come.
I mean if you're talking decades here you're probably right but then again that also will hold true for Windows, Chrome, HTTP/3 and basically everything.
This is simply not true. Even the new N64 port got merged even though it's not very practical.
> because security
As long as your module is not enabled by default, there is little security concern with it.
> who will maintain that?
Well you of course. Having someone who maintains it is the biggest factor in deciding whether code will stay or whether it will go.
Check Android and maker distributions for how much gets merged upstream.
The only guarantee of the future is that it is unpredictable.
Yet here you are making predictions...
I doubt Linux will fade away until there is some major paradigm change away from Van Neumann architecture. It has survived and become dominant over 30 years by constantly adapting and innovating.
Eventually other things in life are more relevant and all that idealism fades away.
Even Linux will eventually be replaced by something else, when all the kernel engineers that helped its adoption are gone.
It won't be tomorrow, but it will come.