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Linux Credits File Reanimated

Posted by Hemos on from the how-the-world-expands dept.

No_Weak_Heart writes "In his in depth paper Evolution of the Linux Credits file, Ilkka Tuomi discusses the challenges of extracting data from open source files, and then uses the extracted data to describe the geographical expansion of the core Linux developer community."

6 of 125 comments (clear)

  1. Re:That was quick by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    It's not slashdotted, as of writing (after your post). But if goes down, try this (GIFs converted to PNG because I find GIF offensive).

  2. Re:Patently and Blatently False... by leerpm · · Score: 3, Informative

    The credits file is not a listing of every single developer who has ever contributed a line of code or more. It is a list of those who have made significant contributions, and few who made relatively minor.

    Just because IBM set up a Linux lab in India, does not mean that lab is contributing in any significant way to the codebase of Linux, though they might be helping in other ways such using Linux at IBM.

  3. The CREDITS file is not very accurate by mocm · · Score: 5, Informative

    The people in the CREDITS file are not all the people that work on the kernel. You should look at the Copyright notices in the source code.
    E.g. I am not in the CREDITS file (not that I need to be), but I have Copyright notices in over 30 files. I guess there are many more people working on parts of the linux kernel than are noticed in the CREDITS file.

    --
    ***Quis custodiet ipsos custodes***
  4. Re:Research ?????? by Mr2cents · · Score: 5, Informative
    Talking about research, did you read the article? Did you check the credits file? Let me show you a snippet:
    N: Matti Aarnio
    E: *** (not printing someone else's email here as a spambot target)
    D: Alpha systems hacking, IPv6 and other network related stuff
    D: One of assisting postmasters for vger.kernel.org's lists
    S: (ask for current address)
    S: Finland

    N: Dragos Acostachioaie
    E: ***
    W: http://www.arbornet.org/~dragos
    D: /proc/sysvipc
    S: C. Negri 6, bl. D3
    S: Iasi 6600
    S: Romania
    A good part of the article is dedicated to the analysis, I suggest you check it out. Of course, it's difficult to resist writing an ad-hoc opinion when you see an article with only a few comments..
    --
    "It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
  5. Good news for you by vijaya_chandra · · Score: 2, Informative

    If only you had clicked on the little [1], after the sentence would you have realised that your search space can probably be larger.

    1. There are six names in the Credits file whose gender could not be verified by searches on the Internet or by asking other persons mentioned in the Credits file. As no information indicated that the persons in question would be female, I have made the assumption that they are males.

    The author I guess would be glad if you share the results of your research with him

    (Karma be damned; I am no better than an AC anyway)

  6. How reliable? by vijaya_chandra · · Score: 3, Informative

    Consider the following entry :

    N: Vijaya Chandra
    E: v@tachyontech.net
    W: http://www.tachyontech.net
    D: Stress Tester - /dev/null
    D: Stress Tester - /dev/random

    (You needn't wake up your grep. This entry has been discontinued in the post-0.x kernels)

    Tracerouting to tachyontech.net would tell you that I am in the UK, while only our web/pop servers are in england.

    'Chandra' can either be a male or a female. But the androgynous 'Vijaya' with the 'a' at the ending would score high towards females.

    I would be damnably pi*ed of to find myself considered as a female (unless of course I am thrown into the male-by-default group, which seems to be the case in the article) kernel developer from the UK

    So how reliable can the results of such an evaluation be??

    (Karma be damned; I am no better than an AC anyway)