The community plans to find a successor to the ‘father’ of Linux

Linus Torvalds, born in 1969 and the creator of the Linux kernel, has been the main maintainer since the project began in 1991. After more than three decades, he himself admitted that the core Linux community is “aging”. However, it will not be until early 2026 that a systematic plan will be established by the community to ensure the operation of this operating system if Torvalds retires or encounters unexpected problems.

In the software world, this plan is called overcoming the bus factor, a term that reflects the degree to which a project, organization or system depends on a few key individuals. With Linux, the index is 0, meaning all important decisions depend on the sole individual, Linus Torvalds.

The contingency plan for the task transfer process has just been published on Github in a simple but rigorous manner. First, the Linux community will elect an “organizer” to run the transfer, which can be the Chairman of the technical advisory board of the Linux Foundation or the organizer of the nearest Maintainer Summit. Within 72 hours, the “organizer” must conduct discussions with key names in the Linux community. This group of experts has up to two weeks to make a decision on a successor and notify the community widely via email list.

Previously, Torvalds expressed concern about the Linux maintenance team getting older, while he was not worried about the technical level of the next generation.

“Not immediately, but there are always new faces appearing. After only about three years, they were able to become core developers,” he said, and was proud that there are few open source projects that have maintained a close-knit team for more than 30 years like Linux.

Although Torvalds currently has no intention of giving up his leading position, creating an official backup plan is considered a vital step, ensuring Linux does not fall into chaos without its founder.

The Linux community is one of the largest and most persistent open source communities in the world, bringing together tens of thousands of programmers, engineers and technology businesses participating in development over the past three decades. Not owned by a single company, Linux is built on a global collaboration model, with the Linux kernel maintained by the community and distributions such as Ubuntu, Debian, Red Hat developed on top of it by different organizations.

Thanks to its openness, stability, and high customization ability, Linux has become the dominant operating system of modern digital infrastructure, operating most of the world’s leading Internet servers and supercomputers, the Android platform on billions of smartphones, as well as cloud computing systems, AI, and embedded devices. This backbone role makes Linux not just an operating system, but an important technical foundation of today’s global digital economy and technology.