When Pat gives up Slackware...
 

eventually its going to happen. Patrick Volkerding will be unable or unwilling to continue with Slackware. What do you think will happen when that day comes? Will Slack fork out with Slackware itself abandoned? Taken over by a group that forms to maintain Slackware? abandoned altogether?

Just something I was thinking about. What do you think will happen to Slackware once Pat leaves the scene?

I don't believe there is any public contingency plan in effect, and I doubt one will be made public any time soon. This question has been raised in the past and really the only important points of those discussions are these:

There is no guarantee that Robby/Eric will take over Slackware, seeing as they have their own jobs and it would be a large increased work load.
Anyone else who would like to step up to the plate would obviously be a relative outsider unless another member of the Slackware team would like to step up.
Any distribution with a non-Pat maintainer should in my opinion remain as a fork of Slackware since it ceases to be in its original form.

If you're planning on setting up a large server farm with Slackware you have a legitimate concern that one day support may drop out. At this point in time it appears that Pat and the Slackware team have no immediate plans on stopping (though of course that's conjecture on my part). There isn't really a point of bringing this discussion up again (search for the other threads) since it is very unlikely that any new information will spring forth and the situation remains (and will remain) the same for some time to come.

If he gives up slackware it will end up like a ubuntu but much more stable.

IMHO, totally true for any distribution, if you are planning on using it for 10 years or more. Even a monster like Debian can be eclipsed by some incompatible fork, simply because the latter is a better implementation of the same philosophy. Shit happens. This is just one of many reasons why everyone who is not criminally insane is building their infrastructure on GNU/Linux or *BSD: the main contingency plan is dead-simple. Leaving Windows for anything is like pulling teeth without drugs; not surprising, given that lock-in is a major design goal. The brightest minds at Microsoft spent years figuring out how to make the transition a real pain to implement and impossible to plan for. Going from a Free OS to another Free OS is more like eating an ice-cream cake. Optimally, only admins will even notice the change.

I wish Pat many many long years of SLACK :jawa:, and I certainly hope that someone at least as benign and competent will continue the work when and if Pat steps down. Personally, I am confident that someone will: I am willing to bet that Slackware will go strong for at least another 10 years regardless of Pat's situation. But even if I end up losing my money, choosing Slackware today should be done on the strengths of the OS today (short term support: check!), and if one is to plan long-term, one should write up a transition plan for any OS, no matter how good-looking.

No more Slackware? OMG! I might have to go back to MS Windows. *must CONTROL suicidal thoughts*

No reason to jump! Hold it!

If and when Pat decides to leave, it's not that time right now. And even if it were, how does it affect your current installation? :-)

Anyway,
[quote]IMHO, totally true for any distribution, if you are planning on using it for 10 years or more. Even a monster like Debian can be eclipsed by some incompatible fork, simply because the latter is a better implementation of the same philosophy. Shit happens. [quote]
I follow you here ;-)

You loose me here...
On the infra side of things, leaving Windows is -generally speaking- a piece of cake; It's at the front-end that people will notice differences and thus are scared and thus do not want it but rather keep their souls sold to a company in Redmond.

What will happen if the sun will not shine anymore?

People, stop flooding. I am more than 10 years with Slackware and always hear people are saying that Slackware is almost dead. It is simply not true and people just want to talk about anything. It is still (and always was) the best distribution I ever tried. Mods, please close this thread.

If and when Pat gives up Slackware...?

I would have to go back to Windows and life would be like this ;)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzL8secQBkA

Bottom line, there is no Slackware without Pat.

Could be any number of things happen.

1) Slackware is a commercial concern. When Pat retires he might choose to sell the business as an ongoing consideration to someone, and who knows what direction they may choose to take it.

2) One of the many dependent distros may be forced to mature into a self-sustaining project and carry on the good work.

3) All the die-hard LQ Slackers band together to form a community fork, perhaps allied with slackbuilds.org in some way.

4) Those with the skills necessary have the source tree and could take thier systems under their own wing, LFS style.

plus loads of other possible scenarios.....


Besides, Linux and the UNIX model may be completely obsolete in 20 years time anyway and everyone will be walking around saying "Google: it's got what plants crave"

Personally, I think it's better not to think too much into this, and simply do what seems right at the time. I'm sure there are people here who will take over if something happens, and hopefully nothing will happen.

If this were a conditional expression for "if" or "?:" in C, any decent compiler would just omit both the conditional expression and the block for the true condition and emit no code for those. If there is a false condition block, it would be compiled in line.

OMG ... i wonder that will be a fork ....
Unless something could happen ... or the worst and horrible nightmare could became true, that M$ could buy Slackware ...
OMG ... OMG ... i don't want to think of that ....

Yeah... that would be bad, huh? Slackdows or WinSlack? I don't like the sound of either. ;)

I hope it's a very distant future, nevertheless sooner or later it's going to happen.
For now though, let's not think about it. A more pressing issue is the question of 13.2 release.

I like this. By the time it happens, I'll be a Slackware guru and will be able to contribute. I don't suppose it'll happen this century.
With each day you use Slackware, you get one day younger.

So... that makes me roughly half my chronological age... I think.

---------- Post added 02-23-11 at 11:20 PM ----------

Oh, I certainly hope not!