In a recent article at Network World, the executive director of Linux Foundation, Jim Zemlin,says "that Linux is a success because the people building it don't plan." There's also a mention about "Linus Torvalds told attendees at LinuxCon in August that he can't predict what's next and doesn't think of himself as a visionary kind of guy. He is focused on the changes to the next release and perhaps the one after that."
That sound pretty much like a iterative development cycle.
Linus may not plan but Red Hat, IBM and the rest of the 500 companies contributing to the kernel probably do have some kind of plans.
VastaaPoista