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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."

7 of 125 comments (clear)

  1. Who Knew? by WarriorPoet42 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Luxumburg has more per capita changes then any other country?

    Finland needs to support its baby and fight back!

    --Ignore this thread as first posts are automatically modded down.

  2. Awww... not animated... by jrrl · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Somehow I was imagining a world map with little lights popping up to show how development spread o'er the world over time.

    Very cool anyway, but not as eye-candy-ish.

    -jrrl.
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  3. Statistical Significance by 14erCleaner · · Score: 3, Interesting
    From the article: In July 2002, the Credits file contained information on 418 developers. With two exceptions, all were male.

    Anyone who thinks there's little difference between the way men's and women's brains work should consider this statistic. I don't think that societal expectations, peer pressure, or discrimination can account for the 200-to-1 ratio in this case. It's probably safe to conclude that the kernel-hacker gene resides on the Y chromosome.

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  4. Patently and Blatently False... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    He says there are no developers from india...IBM has at least a couple on hire over there....

  5. Re:Potential flamers please read by perly-king-69 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Quite. It would have been nice touch if the per-capita table had some sort of GDP/capita value factored in, rather than assume each person had equivalent access to computer hardware.

    Lies, damned lies, and statistics... ;-)

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  6. Meanwhile, back in 1975-1977 at DEC... by Ian.Waring · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Of the 5 core developers of the VAX/VMS V1.0 kernel, 2 were female. Nancy Kronenberg and Cathy Morse if my memory serves me right. Alongside David Cutler, Richard Hustvedt and another Richard that went to Microsoft via Apple (Pink). Oops, maybe 6 developers - Andy Goldstein on the file system.

  7. Re:The CREDITS file is not very accurate by ischemic · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Yes, the CREDITS file is not comprehensive, and (at least in 1998), the copyright notices were somewhat better but also not definitive.

    You might be interested in a (old, 1999) paper on how you can use the CREDITS file to try to figure out how the Linux kernel interacts by looking at how developers work on different parts of the system.

    I think that the lack of definitiveness of the CREDITS file and copyright notices is very understandable given the way they are updated manually. It might be an argument for having meta-data associated with source code. This type of information is encoded in a revision control system if everyone uses is, but with open source, the author of some code fragment is not necessarily going to log into your cvs repository and edit the text. Someone else may be cloning the code and inserting it (with the author's GPL blessing). It would be nice if there were a standardized way to track these types of edits and code provenance. Might be especially useful in refuting SCO type FUD.

    I haven't looked at what Linus is doing with enhanced copyright tracking; is that something that can be standardized/automated/shared with other projects?