Looking At The Linux Kernel

A reader writes: "Some folks from The Boston Consulting Group with OSDN have been working on creating a visual representation of the Linux Kernel. It's been put online, complete with instructions with how to read it, and how to make sense of the information." There's also some new code checked into the Free Code Graphing Project, which enabled this to project to come together (look at CVS) - let's see if we can get people to do it with things like *BSD, Apache and some of the other great projects out there. This is a continuation with the other work being done, like the OSS demographic work. (Note: Slashdot is part of OSDN.) Karim Lakhani, progenitor in many ways of the project also commented: "The kernelmap shows beautifully the inherent modularity of the Linux Kernel. We think modularity of the source code is one of the important strategic advantages that the Linux Community has and we wanted to move beyond a magnifying glass on the kernel map poster to make it browsable and to let the community add new features. We hope that this can become a tool for navigating the kernel and learning more about how it works. Rusty Russel and Martin Pool did an incredible job creating the map and transforming it into html."

Comments

BCG? Why?

[sphealey]

BCG is one of the classic management strategy consulting organizations. Typically that type of consultant comes in and recommends that you fire all your current technology people and replace whatever you have (Unix, AS/400, Novell) with the most expensive and complex products on the market (later they will recommend that you outsource everything to one of their "partners").

For the last 10 years the "most expensive and complicated" option has been Microsoft, and that is what the consultants have pushed.

Why would BCG be involved in Linux???? There is no percentage in it for them - or is there? Help me understand here.

sPh

Re:What's the point?

[jeffy124]

if someone were to come along and want to make a change to the kernel, he/she use the graph to determine what other parts of the system may be affected if the change were to be made, in theory leading to a more robust system.

These are used all the time in software re-engineering, and there's an entire research community in software visualization. It's particularly helpful for legacy systems where architectual design or other docs have been lost or are severely outdated.

You ask and answer

[Pac]

(later they will recommend that you outsource everything to one of their "partners")

Which is exactly where the real money has always been, as SAP showed us so well. And it has been explained to exhaustion already that the right way to make money with Free software is by providing service to the users of the said software.

Re:Congrats!

[jeffy124]

rather than repeat myself, read this thread.

Information Visualization

[koto54]

I do rather prefers the Seesoft visualization, based on the Treemap principe, or the HyperProf visualization, based on the Hyperbolic Tree principle.

Moreover, there is free and open-source implementations of those two visualizations: Treemap Java Library and Hypertree Java Library.

Re:BCG? Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably because your best leads are the clients you've already served.

If you've got 99% of your clients using Windows whatever, consulting them to go another way is always going to make you some more money. While Free software may be cheaper than a six pack of Schlitz, installing and developing a system is not. As long as you listen to their recommendations and you their "partners", they're going to make money.

Re:BCG? Why?

[iabervon]

They're clearly trying to determine whether Open Source could be a more complicated and expensive option. They have to decide whether to start suggesting that companies hire open source hackers to write whatever the companies want. If you look at the demographic survey, they are clearly figuring out that open source hackers are frequently not employed, but could demand a lot of money if someone were going to hire them, and they have the experience to write really complex stuff.

A little less tongue-in-cheek: BCG could probably do well coming in, looking at what your problems are, and telling you which open source hackers you should pay to fix them. Then they can charge a percentage on the whole thing.

There's only a limited amount of money you can spend buying MicroSoft products. It's huge, but you can spend even more on open source if you pay the salaries of the hackers. I mean, they are projects with hundreds or even thousands of contributors. If you give them each $100k...

Re:I'll be damned

[NeoSkandranon]

I think you mean Azathoth, the insane blind god of chaos that rules from the center of nothingness.

modularity is not unique to Linux

[elmegil]

The kernelmap shows beautifully the inherent modularity of the Linux Kernel. We think modularity of the source code is one of the important strategic advantages that the Linux Community has...

I've seen diagrams of Unix from the 70's that had exactly the same structure to them. Nothing new.

Furthermore, Solaris has been inherently modular (and has evolved to have fine grained locking and an almost fully preemptible kernel) since SVR4 was adopted by Sun as the basis for Solaris. I can't see spending the time to map Solaris too, but I bet if someone did, it would look exactly the same.

Dont' get me wrong, this is a nifty tool, looks neat, etc. But if someone wants to use it to claim uniqueness for Linux, they're barking up the wrong source tree.