> necessarily leading to a permanent forking of the code. Even if it does, > Linus owns the rights to the Linux trademark, and if someone goes too far > overboard, he has the ability to prevent them from calling it Linux. I > would be surprised if it ever goes that far.
Whats interesting is that not only do the distributors want to avoid fragmentation (your maintenance cost rises steeply with each shift you make away from the base tree) but the customers understand the importance. The enterprise customers are quite open that anyone who goes off on a weird tangent won't get their business.
