Pretty disheartening story to read. One of the greatest frustrations with open source is that it, like all other human enterprises, eventually becomes a matter of politics.

Reading the article it seems like the requirements of desktops and servers are sufficiently different to deserve separate kernels. It certainly wasn't worth his time to keep working with the kernel developers if they refused to fairly examine his contributions.

I agree, this story is completely disheartening. The fact that ego's can get in the way or a better more elegant design is basic human behaviour. I'd hope to think that anyone who is designing a product for their end user would be Abel to recognize that, but I suspect that is a bit too optimistic.

Although I think splitting the kernel into separate products for different applications is a problem as well. What it really comes down to at that point is where are you planning on taking your product?

Are you satisfied with a big market with large customers, or do you really want a huge market with nearly unlimited small customers. f Linux really wants to be on the desktop, they will have to moderate some of their features that are enterprise only to make the desktop experience better.

It would be interesting to see how MS's kernel differs between client OS's and their servers. They have huge user camps both on the desktop and in enterprises, both of which are major, strategically important profit centers.

The GPL pretty much ensure a server centric development model on Linux, though. Most open source developers and supporters aren't quite so 'open' with their own companies' source code, thus preferring to 'distribute' their apps as web apps, requiring no source disclosure.