DistroWatch says systemd project to fork the kernel
 

You tell me if this is an April fools joke or not...
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?is...0330#community

By the looks of it, future systemd releases will also ship with a shiny custom (compatible) kernel, courtesy of Lennart and company.

This is why I switched to PCLinuxOS, I don't need this hanky panky.

I wonder how the folks over at Debian are taking this news? Will they cave and use the custom kernel too?

Edit: Jesse Smith has a nasty habit of pulling April fools jokes, I get no search results for an "Ivan Gotyaovich". It would appear I've been 'had'. :/

Probably, it is an early joke, as you observed ... but it's kinda disquieting how rapidly such a joke will be readily accepted by folks who are already predisposed to see "systemd" as an emissary from The Borg. :p

Indeed, but it can be taken as a measurement. If you see blogs that re-post this without questioning it, just to get clicks or to spread FUD, you know what you can think about the quality of that blog. I am curious how many blogs will fall for it.

April Fool has been forked: Late March Fool.

Thanks for the humorous replies. :D

In this case we may have to rename Borg, Lorg? Porg? This 'joke' could turn out to be prophetic, nothing surprises me anymore.

Phoronix now came out with an article informing Phoronix readers that this was a joke, since it seems that Michael Larabel (the man behind Phoronix) has received a huge number of mails from his readers trying to make him aware of this "news".

Mmm, this is strange. My post (#4) is included in the comments on DistroWatch (scroll down to 70), but I didn't put it there. And if you hover over the name, BrianL, that isn't me.

Sounds legit to me. Systemd and its perpetrators after all seem bent on obfuscating and controlling linux for profit and at the expense of user privacy and configurability.
Control of the kernel and sabotage of its development process is a logical next step. It may be a joke now, lets hope it stays that way.

I'm not sure. I won't claim to know everything that goes into this, but if they forked the kernel, then the "normal" Linux kernel wouldn't be affected by systemd devs trying to adjust it to their needs? At first glance, that would seem to be a good thing.

Nah, just looking at the git repo of the 'fork' -there are no commits aside from the initial commit. And the repo is named 'systemdaemon', not systemd.

A fork of the kernel into their tree would bring nothing to them. Developers will still commit their changes to the original kernel and a systemd kernel would go large unmainatained and untested. That is why they actively contribute to the original kernel and work together with its developers.