It Looks Like Linux Chief Linus Torvalds Made a Good Call Regarding Kent 'Slop' Overstreet
Last summer Bcachefs made many headlines for many reasons, e.g. distro adoption or controversy in Linux, eventually resulting in removal. Yesterday we wrote about its developer in relation to this article which said: "The name "Kent" links to the project homepage of the bcachefs file system, whose sometimes tumultuous development The Register has been reporting on since its beginning over a decade ago. Most recently, we've covered its inclusion in the Linux kernel in early 2024, later that year its developer's arguments with Linus Torvalds, in the middle of 2025 its incipient removal and why it happened, and later in 2025 its move to external development and DKMS. It's been a bumpy ride, and it may be about to get more so. The new blog says that it is generated by an LLM, and Overstreet has posted to explain and defend it in a remarkable Reddit thread."
"I saw you mentioned BCACHEFS too," a reader told us, adding that (to put it bluntly) "that guy is a loon."
"If you want to see more, you should checkout this video from a very pro FLOSS/RMS YouTuber."
Brodie Robertson is not pro-RMS, but set aside the differences (he's sometimes pro-RMS, sometimes very much against him, he even did some 'hit pieces' or 'hit videos' on me because I had defended RMS), what's noteworthy is that Torvalds could probably smell erratic behaviour. Overstreet's treatment and removal of his work from the kernel (SUSE later commented on this, as did many other distros) was remarkable, but people focused on a CoC, politics, and personal vengeance as factors in the decision.
Having never met or even chatted to Overstreet, I'm not in a position to judge him. I've never used Bcachefs, either.
But Bcachefs is possibly a good project, maybe it is not. Overstreet might be a fantastic human being, albeit misunderstood. Maybe the opposite is true.
"This doesn’t have anything to do with RMS," the reader told us, "but it’s crazy to see that Kent [Overstreet] got kicked out of the kernel and now has zero standards for his own file system level code. That project had so much potential pissed away so fast by the creator."
In a nutshell, he's letting slop take over the otherwise human-audited code. That's really bad when the software deals with a file system, i.e. the integrity of people's (or companies') information.
It doesn't matter if Overstreet is a wonderful person or not, slop in his project is a giant own goal. Nobody will trust this project again; heck, many people won't even trust anything else from Overstreet.
What compels a person to be self-destructive?
As an aside, Overstreet can never go mainstream, even if he's a sensible person who - unlike some other dude with a file system named under himself - never harms anyone (like Nina Reiser).
The leading file systems will always be chosen by the likes of IBM (e.g. XFS) or Google/GAFAM (extX) or maybe even Samsung (F2FS for Flash).
The sad reality is, while it feasible to change the world with technological innovation such as a very good computer program, the world is still governed by politicians or plutocrats who control (choose, bribe etc.) those politicians and software platforms - e.g. Windows or Azure - are typically chosen by political means (including bribery, bailouts etc.), so unless the technical person or project or company becomes a pawn of the Cheetos of the world - people who try to get what they want by violence and blackmail (like GAFAM bending over to their dictator and orange-nosing his back end) - they will lose their swaying power irrespective of technical merits, advantages etc. Some of them pay millions for the Linux Foundation to be their 'fixer'; that's why Rust was eventually - in the face of initial resistance - pushed into Linux. GAFAM paid for that to happen. Front groups for Rust adoption were set up by Bill Gates 'fanboi' Jim Zemlin.
This is not the market of fair competition where better ideas win. The scales are tipped using money (in the two senses of the word "tip"). █