But the Linux kernel had Linus Torvalds who acted as a dictator. We can argue he did some kind of technical management there.

Yeah - I think that's good insight. You need someone that has all power and resolves conflict if necessary. But even for something as big as the linux kernel, Linus did the dictator part _and_ continued coding, doing PR reviews etc.

So how much management is really necessary?

How much time did he spend on coding as Linux got bigger?

And you could argue PR reviews was how Linus performed his management function. Which could be an interesting way to organize technical management in proprietary software projects, too...

> How much time did he spend on coding as Linux got bigger?

Yeah, I don't know. But even just keeping up with PRs seems quite time intense.

> And you could argue PR reviews was how Linus performed his management function

You certainly can, but just because the word "management" appears in there, it is wholly different from the "management" that the original post is talking about. But yeah, you can call both management. You can also call a software developer a manager of the codebase I suppose.

I think the original article is predicated on the notion of "management" as a role (specific person so designated), and not a skill, that can be taken up by any developer. If it was the latter then the whole argument would fall apart.

Personally, I think managers are primarily intermediaries between capitalists and laborers. So they are needed under capitalist mode of production, where surplus value is extracted (according to Marx, at least), but they are probably superfluous under different modes of production, like that of open-source software.

> I think it's worth pointing out that one of the largest software projects in existence, Linux kernel, doesn't have software managers either.

Most linux contributors, as I understand it, are paid to do it by their employers, and get managed that way.

A significant amount of work on the Linux kernel is done by contributors who on the clock for Intel, Red Hat, etc., and I'm sure have software managers.

That could sorta make sense if these managers would actually talk to each other, but.. I think they are not.