Kernel: New Maintainer for x86 Branch
Back at the Kernel Summit in September Andi Kleen announced that he would no longer be maintaining the i386 and x86_64 branches if they were merged in the new x86 branch. A new patch shows that Kleen has kept his promise.
The patch changes the x86 architecture maintainer, making it obvious that Andi Kleen is no longer in charge.
At the Kernel Summit 2007, Kleen crticized Linus Torvalds who was still officially the maintainer of the i386 branch for not putting enough effort into maintaining the code. Torvalds referred to i386 as obsolete in five years and proposed merging it with the "x86 Architecture" branch. From now on, Thomas Gleixner, Ingo Molnar and H. Peter Anvin will be maintaining the code which now includes both the i386 and x86_64 architectures.
The proposal to merge these two kernel branches was made by Thomas Gleixner on the Linux Kernel Mailing List in July. This step is likely to facilitate troubleshooting and debugging in future. At the same time, it will make it easier and faster to implement new features.