"The Linux
environment, as we know it today," is made up of hundreds of individual open-source projects.
"The Linux
Kernel," being the bit that runs in supervisor-mode (ring zero ...) to control the actual hardware, remains Linus Torvalds' benevolent kingdom. (Although different subgroups work on different architectures.)
"GNU," which we might best think of as "the command-line tools, compilers, toolchains and so-forth," is yet another group.
(A group that hasn't quite gotten over the fact that "no one has 'heard' of HURD ...")
And the list just goes on-and-on forever. There are active development groups for all of the languages, databases, application frameworks ... you name it. They all pretty much have the same distributed organization, a definite hierarchy, and professional-grade management. Some of the groups are funded by established foundations. Some of the largest and wealthiest companies in computer-dom participate ... financially, and by labor.
Theoretically, "anyone" can "submit a patch," or suggest an idea for a fee-chur and so on, but in actual practice it's not that easy.
You have to
earn your way "inside," and then put up with the inevitable and necessary politics. Not for the faint of heart.
Even though "no one owns it all," it all works ... and, it all works
together. Quite a remarkable achievement, really. It's quite breathtaking to see the power of
cooperation, and that is what I prefer to call this phenomenon:
"cooperative, distributed, decentralized software development." The staggering cost of software development is effectively amortized in a most unusual way, and a rising tide lifts all boats.
