There's no question that development of technology is just going to make Linux obsolete at some point. The question is just: "How long will it take?" Will it be in 5 years, or 15 years, or will it be 50 years?

I think one of the powers of open source is that in 50 years the next operating system that's best at the time will be able to take advantage of the source base that Linux had. The source code itself is to some degree the memory of Linux and people can always use that as a kind of blueprint.

But there's more than that. There's also the intangible issues about why things were designed in certain ways and I think those are out there even if I weren't out there.