From a health-of-the-Linux-ecosystem point of view, Gentoo developers seem more prone than those working for other distros to actually pay attention to things like broken build systems or test suites, and file bugs against them. This is especially the case for exotic arches that the developers of some software claim to support but don’t themselves build for (but it affects amd64 too).

I don’t think there’s anything preventing someone from forking it into an out-of-tree patchset or alternative module, if they’re enthusiastic about the feature. But I’m pretty sure that searching for someone to rewrite a non-core function that most people don’t vare about is way outside what Linus and the various core maintainers want to do with their time. Normally open source is about people scratching their own itches.

But why they need to remove it?

Most likely maintainers are looking to reduce the maintenance burden produced by a feature that had very low uptake (assuming, as others are saying, that it’s only data journalling and not metadata journalling that’s being removed).

And also, pretty important, zero drama.

Not entirely true. The dev mailing list has periodic drama spasms. It just doesn’t tend to spread beyond that.

All they really have to do is specify that all new machines sold domestically have to be loaded with their tailored Linux distro and no other OS, and they’d eventually get rid of the majority of Windows machines. Enforcement of that should at least be possible, since they’d only have to check sellers and distributors of new equipment. Then just lean on domestic developers and/or software companies so that they don’t provide new versions of must-have applications (whatever those may be) for Windows to encourage the holdouts to move on.

It would never fly in a country without an authoritarian government, but China could likely get away with it. It just wouldn’t be instantaneous.

Speaking as someone who doesn’t use any of these things, at least half the problem is the people who push these pieces of software. Hint: telling someone “oh, your preferred software is crap, use this instead” when what they have is already sufficient for their purposes makes you look like a liar and turns people against your message because they don’t like being insulted. There are examples in the comments here already.

There is a type of person who instantly jumps on new software because it is new . . . and y’know, that’s fine. We need those people, or software will never improve. However, most people don’t think that way and need to be offered a compelling reason to change. “This new software has this great new feature” may be a compelling reason . . . for someone who needs or can use that feature. “The codebase of the software you’re using is old and crufty and not attracting many developers” is not a compelling reason as long as there’s at least one person around providing needed patches. Even “the software you’re currently using is completely unmaintained” may not be a compelling reason if the software continues to work and doesn’t have any known major security issues.