Take this case, it all started over a bit of code. The subsystem maintainer refuses to take it. But it does not require any changes to existing code. It just has to be merged. Linus can take it directly. If he does that, the Rust folks can start to use it. The sub-system maintainer will lose in the end. At some point, the battle will be lost by those trying to block Rust. It all depends on Linus. We will see.

Linus hasn’t been merging the necessary code, by virtue of supporting a maintainer who was very obviously trying to sabotage R4L; if Linus was going to stand up for R4L, this would have been the time.