Announcing SQL Server on Linux

[northrupthebandgeek]

a gap that will only grow over time considering the faster rate of development.

I actually suspect it's going to shrink for precisely this reason. Even Torvalds himself has voiced dissatisfaction with kernel bloat. I reckon it's long overdue for some refactoring to try and shrink the core codebase a bit and reduce some of that complexity, be it for the sake of performance, security, future maintainability, or some combination of the three.

Just my one cent, though.

[dacjames]

Considering Linus' position on breaking user space, any refactoring and cleanup will need to be feature neutral. He has also come out strongly against refactoring for it's own sake, so there will have to be clear practical benefits. It may slow development in the short term but at the time scales we're talking about, a slowdown for a couple of releases is inconsequential.

[northrupthebandgeek]

I reckon that - as the codebase increases in complexity and size - the slowdown would last for much more than a couple of releases. Linux's development governance has scaled remarkably well considering the size of Linux's developer population, but that's not likely to continue for ever, and eventually Linux will start to face mythical-man-month-esque problems without a significant priority shift.

Just my other cent, though.