While releasing Linux 2.4.33-rc3 Marcelo Tosatti has announced that in future Willy Tarreau will maintain the Linux kernel series 2.4. Four and a half years ago Mr. Tosatti had at the age of 18 taken over the position of maintainer of the kernel series 2.4 from Version 2.4.15 upwards from Linus Torvalds. However, since the publication of the kernel series 2.6 Linux 2.4 has -- not unexpectedly -- seen its importance diminish. Thus of late Kernel 2.4 has only received minor corrections, with new functions and drivers for up-to-date hardware in short supply. Witness the patches for 2.4.31 and 2.4.32, which were down to 25 and 54 kilobytes (bz2 format) respectively, whereas, for example, the packed patch for upgrading 2.6.16 to 2.6.17 alone came to almost six megabytes.

Full Story.