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Linux powers the internet, the Android in your pocket, and perhaps even some of your household appliances. A controversy over politics is now seeing some of its developers threatening to withdraw the license to all of their code, potentially destroying or making the whole Linux kernel unusable for a very long time.
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One of the perpetual open source problems with projects growing too big.
The contributors start squabbling amongst themselves, (in this case over political/race/gender issues), and forget why they were there in the first place..
This March 2018 article from the Linux Foundation seems strangely prophetic:
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“A minor thing can get blown into catastrophic proportions in a short time because of misunderstandings and because something that should have been done in private ended up being public,”
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Anyone want to bet that Google will just take Linux development over to 'protect' the Android OS?
The devs can withdraw their copyright licences but Google already have the code, it's open source.
The devs could try to sue for breach of copyright, but do they have the resources to take on Google?
We've all seen these copyright battles in the software/hardware industry, they go on for years.