LinuxConf.Au: The Linux kernel hacker generations

The author is a long term linux kernel developer (starting with early 2.1.x) and has followed the linux kernel community for some time longer. During this time a lot of new key contributors appeared and many others disappeared (and in some cases reappeared later again after hiding for some time). Each new generation of kernel hackers seems to approach various areas -- both communication and writing code -- differently. I would like to share some observations on how the kernel community changed over time.