Linux: The State of the Kernel -- Buggier?

I've been using Open Source software for quite a while, and I'll admit I enjoy the challenges. I also enjoy how quickly the community of programmers and system administrators can tackle problems. One thing I can't stand though are the zealots in the community.

Recently several high profile OSS personalities have made light of the fact that bugs are being introduced into the 2.6.x kernel at a much higher rate than previous. I don't find this at all surprising. When you consider that there aren't that many gatekeepers to the final kernel and that most of them do this in additional to other work duties, I'm almost amazed the rate of bugs isn't a lot higher than it once was.

Zealots in the community would decry this as heresy, but really this is the result of the rapid changes that have taken place in the Linux world and just how much larger the community has gotten. Like anything which involves growth however, there's manageable limits. I think Andrew Morton and Linus Torvalds are on the right track. A bug-fix cycle is probably right. Knowing when to put the breaks on something to fix things NOW rather than later is not an easy choice to make but it sure as hell makes it easier to correct the problem before it gets worse.