
What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit by a Bus? (2000) - ZeeshanAK
https://www.crummy.com/writing/segfault.org/Bus.html
======
an-allen
Real Story Here. A colleague and I developed a training course on the
Foundations of DevOps. We started the course off with a discussion about risk
in Software Delivery and IT in general. Attendees would often surface the
"Key-Person Risk" or the "Hit by a Bus Risk" to which we would use as a
teachable moment for pair programming, cross pollination, and measuring and
improving the time it takes for new joins to become productive with the
systems and or code base. We would illustrate that one of the ways we
mitigated the Key Person Risk with the course was to always deliver it in
pairs.

My colleague was tragically struck by a car and killed about three months ago.
The course suffered an immense blow to the knowledge capital it had - but due
to the fact that we had planned to mitigate against key-person risk by pairing
- the course was able to survive and retain a fair bit of the legacy my
colleague left behind.

I just share this to say that the getting "hit by a bus" scenario is something
that, much like this post, we throw around in jest and treat in a laissez-
faire fashion. The fact is that it is a tragic, unimaginable, event that does
in fact occur from time to time and something I will take seriously for the
rest of my life.

~~~
geofft
I'm very sorry for your loss.

I've heard "wins the lottery" as a less morbid metaphor for the same concept:
one of your employees stops working in a low-probability event. Of course the
higher-probability event is leaving their job (but somehow it's _less_ polite
to just say that); you usually get two weeks to hurriedly start documenting
things, and with the current state of employee/employer relations you might
easily get less. Or they might have several days of vacation saved up.

~~~
bryanlarsen
As far as I can tell, "hits by a bus" is actually the euphemism. The highest
probability way to lose an employee is just the employee quitting to work
somewhere else. But you can't say that because it implies that your current
workplace is suboptimal. Whereas "hits by a bus" is out of the control of your
employer, so safe to say...

~~~
gammateam
Devs stay in one place like 15 months

Occassionally a 2 year stint just so some Gen X-er that reviews their resume’
doesnt consider them too noncommittal

No need to mince words about people leaving

~~~
bauerd
Mind providing a source for this? I read this all the time but it doesn't
match my experience here in Germany.

~~~
scarface74
1.5 to 3 years doesn’t seem to be too far off the mark.

[https://insights.dice.com/2016/07/08/how-long-do-tech-
pros-s...](https://insights.dice.com/2016/07/08/how-long-do-tech-pros-stay-in-
their-jobs/)

~~~
microtherion
Hmm, data compiled from "Public Profiles". I wonder where they got "Public
Profiles", listing people's profession and length of tenure. Could it be
places like LinkedIn or Dice, and could it be that such places overrepresent
engineers inclined to switch jobs?

Personally, I'd be disinclined to interview a candidate with >= 3 jobs on the
resumé, none of which lasted longer than 2 years. Taking into account the time
spent for them to get up to speed, and the time their successors would have to
spend taking over their code, it seems unlikely that their tenure would make
much of a positive impact.

Furthermore, a key driver of experience in software engineers is maintaining
their own code over multiple product cycles. Job hoppers not only don't
acquire that experience, but may actively fall into a habit of bailing as soon
as they get sick of their own code.

~~~
scarface74
Well,two points.

\- Salary compression especially early on in your career is real. Most
companies don’t do market adjustments after you are hired and only adjust
salaries by a predetermined very low amount. The only way to get market
salaries is by frequent job changes.

\- If you have a job and people are willing to hire a job hopper, why not
leave? At some point it will be a negative but when that time comes, just stay
at a job until you get a better one. Also, if you do change jobs make sure
it’s for the right reasons. For me, it’s technology, environment, and money in
that order.

------
teacpde
The question in the article reminds me what I read yesterday about an
interview with Bram Moolenaar (author of Vim):

> How can the community ensure that the Vim project succeeds for the
> foreseeable future?

> Keep me alive.

[https://www.binpress.com/vim-creator-bram-moolenaar-
intervie...](https://www.binpress.com/vim-creator-bram-moolenaar-interview/)

------
zunzun
The methodology seems flawed in that it does not take into account that, if
the buses were self-driving, what operating system was used as this would
affect collision lethality.

------
mhh__
On a much smaller scale, I realized that I am probably the only person in my
group (of stage/ audiovisual technical folks) who understands everything
fully: I'm stopping next year, so I'm documenting how to do everything I do.

You can never have too much documentation - which isn't exactly what this
dilemma is about - but still it raises an interesting bit of planning which
should always be considered.

~~~
koonsolo
Before I left my first job, I made a document called "Koen's brain dump" where
I would document anything that only I knew.

Years later I heard from my ex-colleagues that they not only used my brain
dump, but were still extending it.

Seems like I was getting smarter without me ever realizing it ;).

------
davidscolgan
Speaking of getting hit by a bus, a friend and I are considering a consulting
service that could help mitigate bus factor risk - would love any feedback on
this idea.

We've both noticed that for nontechnical owners of small businesses that have
a heavy software component, that owner is completely at the mercy of their
lead developer. If that person leaves or "gets hit by a bus" their company
might just die, especially since they don't really know what a Github is or
how to log into anything. My friend is such a nontechnical person and hired
someone to build his SaaS app. He has felt this risk himself but we wonder if
he's just particularly perceptive.

The service would be, for a retainer fee per month a developer sits in on your
planning calls, looks over all code committed to your repo, and over time
documents how everything works and stores that documentation in a system
outside of the company (maybe an external wiki or something). Then if your
lead developer leaves, we'd help you find a new one and then train them on the
codebase using the documentation created.

~~~
schoen
Over on the Let's Encrypt Community Forum we get quite a few inquiries from
people who say "I'm the site owner and my developer [disappeared|quit|was only
hired for a one-time setup task] and my certificate expired; how do I renew
it?".

I assume this is a really common pattern for web sites in general. :-(

I don't imagine that this segment would be interested in paying for
"continuity insurance", but they might grudgingly hire someone for "tech
rescue". I guess that's a very different kind of service; I'm not sure if
there's anything in between the two.

~~~
jimnotgym
> I don't imagine that this segment would be interested in paying for
> "continuity insurance", but they might grudgingly hire someone for "tech
> rescue". I guess that's a very different kind of service; I'm not sure if
> there's anything in between the two.

Very sadly I find myself agreeing with your assessment in general. However I
was once seeking almost exactly this service, and I have to say I struggled to
find what I wanted.

------
based2
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_continuity_planning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_continuity_planning)

[https://www.cmmiconsultantblog.com/cmmi-faqs/what-is-
service...](https://www.cmmiconsultantblog.com/cmmi-faqs/what-is-service-
continuity-scon-in-context-of-cmmi-for-services/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/ab601z/what_if...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/ab601z/what_if_linus_torvalds_gets_hit_by_a_bus/)

[https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/...](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/driver-
model/bus.txt)

------
hirundo
> Our sample consisted of 200 Linus Torvaldses

If there were 200 Linus Torvaldses then after one gets hit by a bus there
would be 199 left. Even after the experiment there were at least 108.9
remaining. That should be plenty to keep Linux going. So what's the problem?

~~~
adtac
Unfortunately, they all exist in parallel. So unless we figure out how to
cryogenically freeze humans for hundreds of years, we'll run out of Torvaldii
(which I think should be the plural for Torvalds) very soon.

~~~
schoen
Torvalds is a Swedish name (Linus Torvalds is from a Swedish Finn family) and
it seems to originate as the genitive (possessive) of the name Torvald

[https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Torvald](https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Torvald)

I think this use of the genitive is a form of patronymic, like if someone
named Torvald had a son named Einar, maybe that person could be called "Einar
Torvalds" (that is, Torvald's Einar).

So it should probably have a Swedish plural

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_grammar#Plural_forms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_grammar#Plural_forms)

I'm not sure which declension it should belong to as a name (and I'll ask a
friend to speculate), but the possibilities there seem to be Torvaldsor,
Torvaldser, and Torvaldsar.

There are no Latin plurals in -i when the nominative form doesn't end in -us
or -um. If you make a Latin plural of Torvalds, it would probably be third
declension and something like Torvaldes (compare urbs 'city', urbes 'cities'),
unless the consonants change in the oblique cases.

------
pm90
I want to ask a genuine question to folks here about disaster recovery and
management. It sounds pretty horrible, but at what point do you just throw up
your hands and give up? How many people in your company would need to be hit
by a bus? Or maybe if aws went down completely for a week? I guess I'm
wondering: how far into the rabbit hole must we go?

I guess the changes of a coworker passing away are more than aws going down
for a week. I guess I'm just overwhelmed by how many scenarios we need to plan
for.

~~~
cdoxsey
This happened to some financial companies on 9/11:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantor_Fitzgerald#9/11_attacks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantor_Fitzgerald#9/11_attacks)

------
giekaton
"What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit by a Bus?” is now permanently archived on:
[https://setinblock.com/0x8006d703a45663cab96a85a4ef3e6ab94a1...](https://setinblock.com/0x8006d703a45663cab96a85a4ef3e6ab94a1410d6e70119139eea807a63ecb79e)

~~~
JeremyBanks
Do you have a license to permanently redistribute it?

~~~
giekaton
That's not a traditional form of re-distribution. In legal terms, I guess it's
a gray area.

The article is now on the blockchain. It is not published (re-distributed)
anywhere in particular. It's also encoded and not in the actual form of an
article.

~~~
JeremyBanks
Involving a technically convoluted mechanism doesn't change the fundamental
legal question here. It's just made it harder for you to undo your potential
violation.

A temporary web mirror has at least a narrow time scope and a justification.
Choosing to embed a copy of content you don't own into a permanently-public
record is a greater offense.

~~~
giekaton
I wonder where exactly do you see the violation?

Is it that I archived it on the blockchain, or that I shared a reader link to
that transaction where the article is archived?

~~~
thecatspaw
> Crummy is © 1996-2018 Leonard Richardson. Unless otherwise noted, all text
> licensed under a Creative Commons License.

You're fine. I would not recommend doing this with texts which you dont have
the copyright to.

~~~
giekaton
Yes, I also saw this later.

But for better understanding, I would love to hear more about "embed a copy of
content you don't own into a permanently-public record is a greater offense".
What is this based on? Are there any known precedents?

------
scarface74
What’s crazy is that I voluntarily try to set aside time to document and cross
train but I get push back. I don’t think anyone has ever voluntarily left the
small company I work for and they don’t think about what would happen if I
leave.

I try to cross train for a few reasons - I would never want to leave the
company in a lurch if I find a better opportunity, I don’t want to be stuck on
an implementation forever because I’m the only one that knows how to do it,
and after awhile, I forget how the systems I designed works together.

------
krapp
Ok. But what if Richard Stallman gets hit by a falling piano?

~~~
TomK32
Beer-shortage in Redmond?

~~~
ThrowawayB7
I doubt anyone in Redmond would really have cared all that much. We were
building products to sell and FOSS was* just another competitor.

* And, despite Nadella, it still is.

------
tomkat0789
There's a lot of comments considering the general case of losing a key person
on a project, but I think it'd be interesting to speculate on what happens to
Linux when Linus leaves the project! Will it go embrace, extend, exterminate?
Will there be a bunch of forks? Will Redhat/IBM/Canonical types keep it up?

------
TomK32
I got hit by a bus two years ago, granted it was more of a rude push by the
side of the bus that I was riding for 6 hours from Athens to its last stop
Preveza and the bus driver was just about to park his bus, but getting hit by
a bus is not necessary lethal. I simply got back on my feet and dusted my
pants.

~~~
danso
I don’t think the posted article is referring to non-lethal bus collisions.

~~~
roywiggins
Guess it depends on what kind of non-lethal. There's lots of ways to be
functionally knocked out of commission for a long time.

------
dikaio
The articles on HN are great but the comments are we keep me coming back,
hilarious. Have to run, need to catch my bus.

~~~
winrid
Half the time I just read the comments. I think I'm addicted. :)

------
gabrielblack
Obvious, he sends SIGBUS to the driver and then someone examines the core dump
:-) Forgive me !

------
sbr464
I'm curious how startups or venture capitalists handle risk around DevOps,
especially certificates, encryption keys, access to dns/domain names etc.

Legal processes take time, you typically need this info quickly in production.
I'm not a VC, but if I was, I would want a backup plan in place before handing
over an XX Million $ check. A smaller startup, or a seed level/pre-launch team
may only have 1 or 2 founders with "admin" level access to this info.

I always thought a "Swiss bank account" type service for DevOps would be
useful. It could handle this situation in a modern way (with a secure, modern
API etc) and would execute a certain disaster recovery plan reliably.

Obviously centralizing that kind of data/ would be a security nightmare in
itself. I'm curious how a larger VC with many companies deals with this
consistently.

I know there are services available in different areas that specialize in
handling certain data (corporate branding/identity, domain names etc) but not
as a whole.

~~~
pm90
> Swiss bank account" type service for DevOps

What does this mean? That nobody has access to production systems except
devops?

~~~
sbr464
For example, there is a copy of the most core encryption keys,
certificates/passwords etc, stored with a 3rd party, who is specialized in
dealing with this kind of info in a modern way.

Similar to how a Swiss bank is familiar with storing valuables/currency or
executing a will.

This type of service would need to be modern in the sense the info can be
updated over an API etc.

Anyone can create a DR plan and handle these issues, but then it isn't
consistent, especially from a partner (VC etc) perspective.

------
pvaldes
Mh, Good question. To avoid an unnecessary waste of fine finnish blood (Santa
Claus could get angry with me) I will try with a cute animal first

cat > /dev/bus

It seems safe enough... the kitty cat is alive

------
oferzelig
What about Antirez? I guess no one knew him back in 2000...

------
techpop10
Answer: Someone will have to clean the bus.

------
Svip
Might want to add '(2000)' to the title. I feel like Torvalds himself have
been addressing aspects of this issue this year.

~~~
soneca
Read the text, it is not what you think

~~~
Svip
I did read the text. It's humorous. But the question itself is no less
important. And considering what happened with Torvalds' position this year,
one might think it is a follow up to that question. So I think adding '(2000)'
would definitely be helpful, if not just accurate.

~~~
porphyrogene
> what happened with Torvalds' position this year

Read: He went on vacation for five weeks.

------
znpy
I am bothered by the fact that Linus is made plural as "Linus Torvaldses" and
not "Lini Torvalds".

~~~
aasasd
I'm pretty sure he's not a Roman but a Finn.

(I'm also quite sure most languages today aren't Latin, namely English isn't.
But what do I know, English speakers seem to have a different opinion.)

~~~
JorgeGT
Finland is the heir of the Roman Empire though:
[https://i.imgur.com/eNuUdTd.png](https://i.imgur.com/eNuUdTd.png)

~~~
aasasd
I'm having a hard time deciding what's more far-fetched, between this and the
actual areas of spread of Finno-Ugric languages.

------
EGreg
Why is it always a bus?

~~~
znpy
Buses are evil tools of the proprietary software corporations, this has been
widely known for a while now.

------
JohnJamesRambo
The early web was a pretty cringey place, although it is now too.

~~~
znpy
I think that it was more humorous and funny.

