Intel is continuing to lay off more Linux maintainers due to corporate restructuring within the company. Phoronix reports that at least four more Intel Linux maintainers have left the company, leaving some of the Linux drivers they worked on without support.
Mustafa Ismail, maintainer of the Intel Ethernet RDMA driver, has left the company, leaving only one other Intel engineer to keep supporting the driver. Intel's Tianfei Zhang, the maintainer for Intel's PTP DFL ToD driver, is also no longer at Intel, leaving the driver without any support. Intel's PTP DFL ToD driver runs the time-of-day device on its FPGA cards.
Intel's WWAN ISOM driver is yet another driver that is now left with zero support, as Intel Linux maintainer M. Chetan Kumar is no longer working at the company. The WWAN ISOM driver is one of Intel's drivers responsible for driving its older M.2 modems.
Keem Bay and Anil S Keshavamurthy have also left Intel. Bay was a DRM driver maintainer, while Keshavamurthy was a maintainer of Intel's kernel probes code, which aids in debugging and performance profiling. Finally, two engineers who worked on the T7XX 5G WWAN driver were also let go, leaving the aforementioned driver without support.
According to other reports by Phoronix, Intel has been losing Linux driver developers/maintainers at an accelerated rate since February of this year. Layoffs have continued to surge since then, with Intel's latest round of layoffs resulting in over 12,000 personnel being cut from the company.
Intel is quickly losing traction in the Linux space due to layoffs of its Linux maintainers. Intel used to maintain a significant presence in Linux kernel development, thanks to its long-standing dominance in the CPU space, and contributed to the development of drivers for various hardware systems, including CPUs, GPUs, storage, and networking.
If Intel fails to provide replacement Linux maintainers, it will lack the personnel needed for key software and driver support. In that case, we might see an uptrend in hardware reliability and compatibility issues, affecting both enterprise and mainstream users, due to outdated drivers. However, if this happens, the best we can hope for is that the Linux community rises to the challenge to resolve issues without insider help, by developing third-party drivers when needed. The Linux community is renowned for this kind of action, but losing the efficiency and insight from first-party support isn't ideal.
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