Yeah. I suppose without Linus's leadership Linux just wouldn't be the same project anymore. The world has come to trust him because he makes good decisions. We depend on his core values such as "don't break userspace". I wonder what it's gonna be like in the future...

> They break API's because... someone felt like it?

I empathize with them. Designing software is essentially philosophy. The interfaces reflect the developer's current understanding of the world. When this understanding improves, people are tempted to update software because they feel like the software is wrong and unelegant when it doesn't match what's in their minds.

It takes a really good engineer to reject this impulse and take responsibility for interfaces people came up with in the 90s.