Estimating the Size/Cost of Linux

2bits writes "Wow... A Billion Dollars Worth Of Software On My System For Free! Check This Guy Out, He Came Up With A Counting / Pricing Method For Quite A Few Types of Source Code. Here is the Program. The results on the site are sorta dated, based on RH 7.1, but the app is pretty cool!... Hey, I can finally find out how much all my side projects are worth / costing me..."

Comments

His Paper Is Bunk

[dbretton]

To put it mildly...

In his paper, he uses the basic COCOMO model for estimating the cost. This model, quite frankly, sucks. Boehm's book even states, more or less, that the COCOMO model is only accurate to a factor of 10.

Since I no longer have the Boehm book, this quote from a google-found web page will have to do. This is a quote of a quote from Boehm's book, Software Engineering Economics:

"Basic COCOMO is good for rough order of magnitude estimates of software costs, but its accuracy is necessarily limited because of its lack of factors to account for differences in hardware constraints, personnel quality and experience, use of modern tools and techniques, and other project attributes known to have a significant influence on costs."

Basically, this means that the estimate could be anywhere from $100M->10B in true cost.

At the very least, this kid should have stated which of the model variants he was using.

Better yet, he should have subdivided the source code into multiple categories: kernel+drivers, tools, productivity software, etc. etc., and then applied the various models to them.

Just my 2 bits.

BTW, here is the google-found page which has the quote I stole. Plus, it gives a nice, albeit brief, overview of COCOMO.

-d

Yeah, right.

[aardvarkjoe]

According to this program, a little calculator program I've occasionally worked on in my spare time over the last couple years would have cost $ 85,659 to develop. (At the money that I was making as a co-op, roughly 3 years, full-time.) Another project, which my two roommates and I have been working on for most of the last year, again in our spare time, is reported to be $ 1,877,009.

So either I'm doing enough work to be worth several hundred thousand dollars a year, or this thing is complete nonsense.