Linux & open source
Linux Deleted a $10 Billion Intel Chip in One Commit. Itanium Took 23 Years to Die
Intel and HP spent roughly $10 billion building Itanium, the chip that was supposed to replace x86 forever. Analysts projected $38 billion in sales by 2001. In Linux 6.7, released in January 2024, the kernel deleted about 65,000 lines of Itanium support in one go, because nobody was left to maintain it. I went through why the most expensive bet in CPU history ended as a pile of deletions, and what it taught Linus Torvalds about anyone who promises the future needs a clean break.
