What's The Linux Kernel Worth?

schneelocke writes "What's the value of the Linux kernel? After an offer by one Jeff V. Merkey to pay 50K USD for a BSD-licensed copy of Linux, David Wheeler does some calculations and comes up with an estimate of 612M USD." Wheeler has come up with a number of interesting software-worth estimates and other quantified facts about Free software; since some aspects involve ineffables and hypotheticals, the details can be argued, but he provides a good framework with SLOCCount.

Comments

Nothing

[AKAImBatman]

By my calculations, the Linux kernel is worth: nothing.

Before you get your tights in a twist, just listen to me for a moment. The value of a product in a capitalistic system is determined by what the market is willing to bear. Yet it is not worth anything if the developers are not willing to sell it at what the market demands. Thus we have a gap. The market would probably be willing to bear a few million (perhaps as high as 50 million) dollars for the Linux IP. Yet it seems that the developers would demand a price in the range of 612 million.

The end result is that the Linux kernel has no market value what so ever. The developers won't sell it at the market's price, and the market won't buy it at the developers price.

Re:Nothing

[millwall]

The end result is that the Linux kernel has no market value what so ever. The developers won't sell it at the market's price, and the market won't buy it at the developers price.

This is not quite true. The market value is what the market would buy the product for, if it WAS for sale.

Imagine that you have a car, which you for whatever reason don't want to sell at the moment. This doesn't leave your car with "no market value". The market value is still what the market would have bought it for if it was for sale.

Re: Nothing

[Black Parrot]

> The end result is that the Linux kernel has no market value what so ever. The developers won't sell it at the market's price, and the market won't buy it at the developers price.

Yeah, I'm waiting for SCOX to come down off its high horse before I buy it, too.

Re:Nothing

[mirko]

Let's take the number of people who actually coded the Linux kernel and for each of them, determine how long they coded.
Also add the number of people who tested it and reported some bug or requested new features...
In the end, compare these values with what it costed companies such as Sun, Apple or Microsoft and you'll get its actual cost...
But now, I totally follow your point when it comes to its price.

Re:Nothing

[fracai]

Aren't the developers demanding a price of nothing?
The estimate is based on the the equivalent value. ie. What the software is worth if it was developed under a commercial environment with R&D, de-bugging, etc. with developers being payed by the hour or line of code.
He also takes into account things like developer experience and code complexity.

I wonder what the value of Windows or OS X would be under his model. Or if either company sold them right now for that matter.

The great thing about first posting is you don't have to read the article. I didn't just write that on a /. board did I?

Re:Nothing

[benasselstine]

The end result is that companies are selling products that contain the linux kernel. Although it is free of charge, the linux kernel adds value to their products. Does it add 612 million dollars to the value of their product? no. But it certainly adds something.

Re:Nothing

[wcbarksdale]

So the Mona Lisa is worth nothing, because the Louvre isn't willing to sell it?

Re:Nothing

[bickerdyke]

You are asuming that there IS a market. The OP stated that there is currently no market for linux kernels, because there is only one potential buyer and one potential seller who cant agree on a price --> no trade, no market, no market price.

In your example there is a market for collector cars which can be used to find a market price.

But it would be better to say "priceless" than "nothing"

Re:Nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no market for his (one) car either. There is a market for cars however, just like there is a market for software, and operating systems in particular.

Re:Nothing

[ch-chuck]

That's kind of a paradox - the kernel is definitely of value to me because it makes my x86 hardware perform useful function, streaming audio servers, radio receiver controllers, development platform, etc. But it's the very fact that it's 1) open code, and 2) freely available as downloadable ISO's that makes it preferable to Msft with their customer controls and marketing BS. It might be more accurate to say the kernel is worth nothing in monitary units to Linus since he's not collecting a royalty from each user deriving utility from each installation like BillG & Co. do for Windows. However Linus could be collecting other intangible benefits like fame, satisfaction of creation, etc. But's it's definitly worth something to me, and would pay a fee if it wasn't freely available. Just not a King's ransom.

Re:Nothing

[zoloto]

Very true. I remember this story from a while ago. It says that linux is worth roughly over 1 Billion dollars. Check out the math with me...

but that's totaling all the software on the disc you'd be getting from a distro. I can't find the article that origionally said this.

Re:Nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you on crack?

By this logic, an Atari 2600 would be worth at least a half-million. My copy of Zork I would be worth over $80K (assume that Meretzky and Lebling were hired by a games company for a year each...).

Re:Nothing

[eln]

The discussion based on the offer is what would it be worth in a binary-only form under a BSD-style license. The developers are willing to accept a price of $0 for the code under a GPL license, but are not willing to sell at any price under a less restrictive license. Hence, there is no asking price for the actual product demanded, as it is explicitly not for sale. Since there is only 1 person in the potential market at this point, and there has been only one offer, with no counter offer (unless you count "infinity dollars" as a valid asking price), there is not enough data to set a reasonable market price for the product.

Estimating based on what it would cost in a commercial environment is also flawed, because there are too many variables to consider. If it were developed in, say, Silicon Valley, each programmer's hourly rate would probably approach $100. If it were developed in, say, Boise, Idaho, the hourly rate for these programmers would probably be in the neighborhood of $20 to $30. There is also development models, management, total personnel required, etc. These things will all vary depending on the nature of the business, what kind of timelines they were looking at, who the management team was, etc.

The bottom line is, since the developers have always been paid nothing for their work (except those that are being sponsored by commercial entities), the total value of their time put into the project is $0. Sure, you could try and put it in terms of an opportunity cost to the developer, but that sort of thing leads to inflated valuations, since in all likelihood if these guys weren't writing the code in their spare time, they would be doing some other hobby that doesn't pay them anything instead.

The bottom line here is, the only time that you can assign a value to is the time that someone actually received a wage for. This is a small minority of the overall code base, so by that method the code would not be worth much at all.

Therefore, all we are left to consider is whether or not Linux is a good value to the consumer. Generally speaking, a good value to the consumer is one in which they extract more value out of the product then what they paid for it. Since most people get Linux for free, it doesn't take much to get more than what you paid out of it, especially if you use it in a business context. There are those, of course, who will get negative value out of it (they get frustrated and throw the computer out the window, for example), but the vast majority of users will get a net positive value out of the product. Putting a dollar amount on that value is difficult, though.

Re:Nothing

[DenDave]

Failing that I would offer that even if someone acquired a BSD licensed kernel, what good would it do him as a product since he is a stand alone develloper who competes against the rest of Linux devellopment ... it's not just about the market, it's also about the production model, the Open Source model as opposed to closing the dev'ing to a limited group.

Re:Nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually you're wrong. The PRICE is determined by the market--mostly--in the kernel's exchange value relative to the standard commodity called money. VALUE is a composite of the kernel's usefulness and what it can be traded for. The use value of the linux kernel is quite high, but the exchange value is very low.

Re:Nothing

[iplayfast]

The value of a product in a capitalistic system is determined by what the market is willing to bear.

The market is willing to bear a lot for the Linux kernel. It is willing to bear programmers time (and pay them for it). It is willing to bear costs of promotion and advertisment. It is willing to bear spending the time to develop it in the first place. You need to expand your view of the market to be beyond the people who would potentionally (sp) buy the software, to include those that buy and use it in other ways then just money.

This is shown by the unwillingness of the Linux developers to sell their rights to use the software in whatever way they want. The developers sell the price for what the market demands. Their price is market particpation and joining of the development effort.

Re:Nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

But there is a market for cars identical (or nearly so) to his. Linux is unique.

Re:Nothing

[airrage]

In the end, compare these values with what it costed companies such as Sun, Apple or Microsoft and you'll get its actual cost...

Ah, the cost is going to actually be higher for Linux due to some paradoxes within Economics, opportunity cost, economies of scale. But I'm quite sure you would have come to the same conclusion. Not really a good way to compare the two ....

Re:Nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

That guy doesn't want just one Atari 2600 or a single binary of Zork I for use on one computer. He want's the design and unlimited redistribution and modification rights. That would mean giving up almost all power that the GPL has, so they would have to price it like a complete "loss" of their product. I wouldn't even start to think about numbers with less than 10 digits.

Re:Nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong on both accounts, and still beside the point. The market value is what the highest bidding buyer is (really) willing to pay, even if there is only one buyer and one instance of the product (because if you want you can think of the owner as the second bidder). The problem is just that you cannot reliably determine the market value without looking at actual comparable transactions.

Re:Nothing

[Mr. No Skills]

One person does not a market make.

Microsoft asks for a price for Windows. I'm not willing to pay more than 3 dollars for it. Our disagreement over this does not make Windows without market value.

The interesting exercise would be to figure out what all of us that are running Linux would be willing to pay for it if it were suddenly unavailable at no cost, not the math of what one person is trying to sell it for times number of potential installs. I think the price of what _investors_ are willing to pay for ownership is different that the market value as well.

Re:Nothing

[shaitand]

No market price is not the same thing as a market price of $0. In fact the appropriate term is priceless.

Re:Nothing

[hph]

Ah, the labor theory of value. That was refuted over 130 years ago by Carl Menger.

Re:Nothing

[Bombcar]

You've hit the nail on the head. The Linux kernel is Priceless.

A DSL connection to the internet: $50
A decent PC: $500
Downloading enterprize-class source code: Priceless.

There is some code you can't buy, for everything else, there's Microsoft.

Re:Nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

The price of a product is determined by what the market is willing to bear. But the value can only be equated to the price for commodities, or if the market is measured over a long time period. For instance, the market may offer $50m today but $1b in 2006, as circumstances change. In this sort of situation, with a unique product, it's very difficult to even define value, let alone calculate it.

Re:Nothing

[ajs]

The bottom line is, since the developers have always been paid nothing for their work

Why do we keep saying this when it is so patently untrue?

Were the SGI engineers payed nothing for their work on the Linux kernel? The DEC engineers who made 2.0 possible? The IBM engineers who ported massive amounts of IBM code into Linux (the topic of a lawsuit, I'll remind you) and wrote a good amount of their own code? What about the Red Hat engineers who have contributed hugely? Alan Cox isn't paid? I think he'd be upset to hear it. Last I checked Linus was being paid specifically for his work on Linux by OSDL.

These are just the high-profile cases. Dozens of people around the world are paid to work on specific niches of the Linux kernel all the time.

Same thing goes for the rest of the OS tools, utilities, and subsystems.

The fact that some, even a majority (and I'm not conviced on that point) of the work might be gratis does not mean "the developers have always been paid nothing."

Re:Nothing

[bfields]

The bottom line is, since the developers have always been paid nothing for their work (except those that are being sponsored by commercial entities),

Also except those with salaries from governments, universities, nonprofits,....

Is there actually a prominent kernel hacker that has "always been paid nothing for their work"?

--Bruce Fields

Re:Nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

if it were suddenly unavailable at no cost

That is impossible. There are copies of Linux all over the world and even if someone managed to convince all kernel copyright holders (and removed/rewrote all code by dead kernel developers), these copies would still be available under the GPL. Once you release something under a proper open source license, you can't take the ball and go home anymore. To the user, this is the primary benefit of all open source licenses.

Re:Nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

So, if a man is not willing to sell his wife for what the market is willing to pay, she is worth nothing. Is that it?

The value of all things cannot be stated in money. That being the case, even things which can be valued in money can have different values.

Take Real Estate: market value, replacement value, book value... any I missed?

In this instance, it seems development value in software might be similar to replacement value in real estate.

A Nony Mouse

Re:Nothing

[Tassach]

Yet it seems that the developers would demand a price in the range of 612 million

RTFA. The 612M figure is an ESTIMATE of what it would cost to DUPLICATE the 2.6 kernel using traditional software development methods. And it's probably a pretty reasonable estimate. Developing good complex software is HARD and EXPENSIVE.

Re:Nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

" So the Mona Lisa is worth nothing, because the Louvre isn't willing to sell it?"

Apparently that is what some people here think. They also think my wife is worth nothing I might add. I however think she is priceless, as is my son.

A Nony Mouse

Re:Nothing

[Thud457]

What is the Grand Canyon worth? The Smithsonian institution? The Lincoln memorial?

The greatest part of the "worth" of these things is that they are public and shared freely with everyone.

Why the hell would some idiot want to buy a BSD-licensed Linux? Just go get yourself a BSD.

Re:Nothing

[Citizen of Earth]

Since there is only 1 person in the potential market at this point, and there has been only one offer, with no counter offer (unless you count "infinity dollars" as a valid asking price), there is not enough data to set a reasonable market price for the product.

Sure there is. Just average the figures $50K and infinity and you get the market price: infinity dollars.

Re:Nothing

[nelsonal]

Keep in mind they aren't just giving it away under a BSD style license, they are giving it away for no dollar consideration but a signficant concession on the part of users and other developers, "you must share any distributed changes." That concession has value, and elimiation of that concession in exchange for monitary consideration is possible at a certain rate. Given the market values of certain software companies with competing products, I'd be hard pressed to put the monetary value of elimination of that concession at several billion (look at sun which is pretty much solaris and a pile of cash), if you could eliminate all the current GPL competition. Since this offer wouldn't (nor would it stop further GPL development) the $600 million figure might be low (i'd still say ~1 billion), but is probably pretty close.

Re:Nothing

[nelsonal]

I'm curions why investor value is not a good measure of the ownership of the license value in your mind. I'd agree that a better measure would the value of the company if a large bloc of stock were sold (say 10% of the company or more) as that would get rid of the liquidity premium that public companies have, but other than that it seems like a fine method to me.

Re:Nothing

[OwnedByTwoCats]

Parent post clearly identified that he was estimating cost, not value. The labor theory of cost works very well.

Value is entirely contextual. A quart of pure water is worth a lot more to someone stranded in the deserts of Utah than it would have been to a member of the crew of the Edmund Fitzgerald, for example.

Re:Nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the hell would some idiot want to buy a BSD-licensed Linux? Just go get yourself a BSD.

You is teh clever.

Because they want Linux, with a more permissive license? Duh.

Re:Nothing

[poptones]

The bottom line is, since the developers have always been paid nothing for their work (except those that are being sponsored by commercial entities), the total value of their time put into the project is $0.

So... if I fix a flat tire on my car myself, that labor has a value of zero dollars? Even 'tho I just saved myself twenty bucks? If I fix my neighbor's computer for free, saving her fifty bucks in the process, the value of my labor is zero? If I spend some time I could be laboring for a paycheck instead engrossed in a hobby, that time has zero value?

Dude... you got some fucked up values

Value:

1 # An amount, as of goods, services, or money, considered to be a fair and suitable equivalent for something else; a fair price or return.

2 # Monetary or material worth: the fluctuating value of gold and silver.

3 # Worth in usefulness or importance to the possessor; utility or merit: the value of an education.

4 # A principle, standard, or quality considered worthwhile or desirable: "The speech was a summons back to the patrician values of restraint and responsibility" (Jonathan Alter).

Therefore, all we are left to consider is whether or not Linux is a good value to the consumer.

By your measure it's not - it's completely worthless unless that consumer paid for it.

What is the value to me of a diamond? Only what I could sell it for - I have no use for a diamond (unless, perhaps, I need to cut a piece of glass). Bottom line is you expended a lot of words saying nothing. Value and price are not directly related, nor even comparable to one another.

Re:Nothing

[Hatta]

The discussion based on the offer is what would it be worth in a binary-only form under a BSD-style license. The developers are willing to accept a price of $0 for the code under a GPL license, but are not willing to sell at any price under a less restrictive license.

As an end user, with a GPL Linux I can have the source code, and thus the freedom to do what I want with it. With a BSD binary linux, if I want to change it, I'm screwed. Therefore, the BSD license is more restrictive.

Re:Nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

It's only worth what each person/company is willing to pay for. You can put a price tag on it but only up for interpretation.

Re:Nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is just that you cannot reliably determine the market value without looking at actual comparable transactions.

... Which would be the part I mentioned about 'identical or nearly so'.

Reading comprehension - you should try it some time.

Re:Nothing

[FuzzieNorn]

The binary would not be BSD licensed. The source code would be BSD licensed. The conditions on the source code are less restrictive. Therefore, the BSD license is less restrictive.

Re:Nothing

[GoCoGi]

Actually, if you got a binary program of which you can't get the source, you didn't get it under the BSD license. The program might have been derived from a BSD program though.

Re:Nothing

[MikeBabcock]

Any script kiddie can download enterprise class source code :)

Priceless is running it on your home computer, finding a bug, fixing it, and having Linus Torvalds tell you your patch is going in and millions of other people will see it in an hour.

Re:Nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

By my calculations, the Linux kernel is worth: nothing.

If you mean by monetary value then you're right. Actually, the Linux kernel is priceless since it's value (or worth) doesn't depend on money alone.

Re:Nothing

[jonbryce]

This one potential buyer is prepared to pay $50k. So it must be worth at least that.

The developers are not prepared to take $50k in exchange for it, so it must be worth more than $50k to them.

Re:Nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because you can't determine market value doesn't mean there is no market value. The single buyer knows the market value alright, just not you or the seller.

Re:Nothing

[AuMatar]

You're confusing the value and the cost. THe two are not the same.

"It is a mistake often made in this country to confuse the value of to measure things by the amount of money they cost." -- Albert Einstein

Re:Nothing

[Jon_E]

wow .. comparing the linux kernel to the mona lisa seems like comparing a field of engines to works of DaVinci ..

something doesn't quite translate here

Re:Nothing

[Rude Turnip]

"...no trade, no market, no market price..."

Of course as an appraiser, I know that to not be true. Just because something doesn't have a market it doesn't mean its worthless. In the case of a hypothetical family business there is no established market, yet it makes money and you surely would not give it away for free. In the case of an asset like the kernel, you'd probably have to look at the time spent developing it, times some sort of hourly rate.

Re:Nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to add a little to this.

I work a regular IT related job for a regular company. We use Linux a little bit for some tasks though we are not a Linux shop.

At one point we were in need of a new feature (awareness of a certain protocol in the kernel's NAT). Finding the feature unavailable, I did about a week of kernel hacking to implement it myself. It wasn't hard, much of that time consisted of figuring out how everything worked and doing testing.

Now the specific patch was not of much public interest and it was for an old kernel version so I didn't contribute it back to the kernel. If it had been something that would have been useful to others, though, I could easily have done so.

I think this is just one example of many that demonstrates the principle that although Linus does not pay for patches, plenty of people are paid to write them all the time.

Re:Nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

But I never get the source code, since the BSD license doesn't require anyone to give it to me. Thus we can say that BSD is less restrictive to software companies while the GPL is less restrictive to end users. The idea was that software companies should serve end users and not the other way around.

Re:Nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

Cost of reimaging one Microsoft computer in the Toronto District School Board: $1,600.00

Cost of the smile on my face, using linux computers, while all of the TDSB Microsoft computers fall victim to the latest problem, after reimaging: Priceless! :-)

Re:Nothing

[IcyHando'Death]

...since the developers have always been paid nothing for their work (except those that are being sponsored by commercial entities), the total value of their time put into the project is $0

Oh, come on! You're obviously confusing cost and value. The value of something is not what it costs to produce or buy, but what you would be willing to pay for it. How much would you be willing to pay to have a new mountain built on the moon? Now how much would it cost to build that mountain?

Re:Nothing

[cmdr_beeftaco]

Exactly. Who gets to sell Linux in any shape or form. Anyone who has worked on it as specificly given up the right to sell their work.

Re:Nothing

[arivanov]

If you consider Jeff Murkey to be a buyer think again. Read the linux kernel archives for a background if necessary. Some of his discussions with Alan Cox and a few others are remarkably selfexplanatory. Interestingly enough IIRC Linus never intervened.

I will just ignore him.

In btw, his presence on Slashdot is a waste of valuable electrons.

In btw2: any likeness to userfriendly is unfortunately purely coincidental.

Re:Nothing

[gmack]

Many people who monitor linux-kernel simply backhole his email address. I'm conservative with my list so theres only about 4 people that I block and hes been blocked for several years now.

It's rare that he actually contributes something worthwhile.

Re:Nothing

[Rotund Prickpull]

I wouldn't even start to think about numbers with less than 10 digits.

I have that much in my pocket, but I'm Turkish, you insensitive clod!!!!!!!

Re:Nothing

[Moderatbastard]

Parent post clearly identified that he was estimating cost, not value.

So? TFA was about value, so who's the tard?

Re:Nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fuck?

Re:Nothing

[shaitand]

Likely because like me, and most people using an open source *nix application, they find linux superior for their particular application.

Re:Nothing

[Mr. No Skills]

Investors are willing to pay based on their guess of future company performance, not necessarily actual, present company performance, nor the value of the company's actual assets. This is why so much analysis goes into those numbers -- Amazon.com stock costs a fortune while running huge loses, or a real company with real assets is worth pennies because investors don't see future growth.

This discussion reminds me of all the discussions about home value. People go to the trouble of having things appraised so they can borrow money or establish their property taxes. But, until a buyer comes along and pays a price the value is somewhat unknown. The sales value of something isn't established until someone actually makes a sale.

Back to the original post - what is the market value of Linux? Seems to me the 600M or so number is somewhat low, if you're an investor who thinks that the use of Linux is going to go through the roof (and you can somehow control users paying you for it when its out there already). What's the value of Microsoft for Windows, say? Investors have pumped up the value of that company's stock under the assumption that they not only have the sales they have now, but there are so many future sales yet to come because its the only game in town. So "Windows" is worth 129 or so a copy because everyone buys it with every PC no matter what, even though it costs Microsoft practically nothing to make it (the R&D being covered long ago). We all _think_ this is the value.

What if we all woke up tomorrow and said "you know what, operating systems shouldn't cost more than $100." And no one bought a pre-installed MS product and everyone was at the local swap meet buying motherboards and loading Linux. A hypothetical to be sure (although maybe not to the readership here). The salaries and "value" of everyone associated with Linux would go up. Microsoft would start discounting Windows like mad to move product. Investors would flee Microsoft and buy Red Hat or Novell/SuSE or whatever. Overnight there would be a complete change of "market value" even though nothing has changed in the cost to build goods, R&D, what something cost yesterday, and what a specific person was willing to pay for one of these products yesterday. The "investor value" would completely change based on the perception of what tomorrow's sales for Microsoft and others would do, even though nothing changed with their planning assumptions the day before.

I think my original point was that a single buyer doesn't indicate the market price, as the parent of my post was about how individuals disagreeing on price mean it has no value. Deciding to own IP is something an investor buyer does, not a consumer, and is based on where the investor _thinks_ the market price will go, but which doesn't directly impact the market price.

Re:Nothing

[TheAntiCrust]

"In btw" In by the way??? Do you mean 'and by the way' or something??? C'mon now! Thats just... bad.

Re:Nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

The value of a product in a capitalistic system is determined by what the market is willing to bear.

Which is a fundamental flaw when evaluating the value of open-source free software. If I can do the same things with a "free" (as in food) linux-based OS that I can do with MS windows/office then it is saving me that much money. So it is worth at least that much. If a license to purchase MS windows code is $100 million and the linux source code helps me achieve the same things that I would expect from the MS windows source, then linux saves me/my company $100 million and is worth that much.

There are some things money can't buy. Even capitalists like mastercard realize that. How come you don't ?

Re:Nothing

[iceburn]

Priceless is running it on your home computer, finding a bug, fixing it, and having Linus Torvalds tell you your patch is going in and millions of other people will see it in an hour.

Or better yet: finding a bug, reporting in on the kernel mailing list, and starting a gigantic flame war ;)

Re:Nothing

[LurkerXXX]

You can get exactly what was released under the BSD license as a source code.

Just because some company takes a copy of it and adds some stuff and releases a binary, that doesn't make the original BSD released code magically disapper. It's still there for anyone to have/use as they see fit. The only thing you might not get is the code for the *extra* stuff that the company added in. They might want paid for their labor and might or might not release their own special code at any later point in time.

You still haven't lost the original BSD code. BSD is less restrictive of everyone.

Re:Nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

If I fix my neighbor's computer for free, saving her fifty bucks in the process, the value of my labor is zero?

Dude, ask her if she can pay you back by *OTHER* means

Re:Nothing

[iabervon]

"The Linux Kernel" is not an item which could be bought. The discussion is about a non-exclusive BSD license to a particular linux version, which is a complicated thing to put a value on. First of all, such a sale would not take anything away from the sellers. Secondly, there are owners not willing to sell for money (although other assets or licenses might be more tempting). Thirdly, there are owners who can no longer be found (some of whom may not know they have inherited rights from deceased developers).

So the offer was for something which would be very difficult to provide (just in terms of finding everyone) and may be impossible to guarantee, regardless of the issue of what price people would put on it (and, for that matter, whether all developers would care at all about huge quantities of money being paid to kernl.org).

The figure given is a standard estimate for how much it would cost to pay a new group of people to develop Linux again from scratch. That is, if you can't make a deal with the actual developers of Linux, you could just pay new people to do the project; this would probably cost $600 million (in salaries for the new people).

As for the actual market value of the Linux IP, it derives in part from the fact that the complete set of owners is unlikely to collude, meaning that the license terms are effectively immutable, and in part from the fact that other licensees pay for their use in development effort rather than money, improving the result directly instead of enriching the owner. This makes its value similar to, say, the Library of Congress, in that it couldn't be owned by a purchaser and still have its value.

Linux has the same market value as the Library of Congress: it can't actually be sold.

Re:Nothing

[bickerdyke]

You said it yourself....
Thats what it's worth to HIM.

A market price only exists when they can agree what it is worth to THEM.

Re:Nothing

[bickerdyke]

I didnt say worthless. I just said priceless.

Re:Nothing

[arcanumas]

Priceless is running it on your home computer, finding a bug, fixing it, and having Linus Torvalds tell you your patch is going in and millions of other people will see it in an hour.

No, priceless is finding a bug, fixing it , having Linus put it in the main kernel tree only to find out that your patch ate thousands of filesystems.
Now THAT's priceless!

Re:Nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

So... if I fix a flat tire on my car myself, that labor has a value of zero dollars? Even 'tho I just saved myself twenty bucks?

I hope you dont forget to report these earnings on your taxes.

Re:Nothing

[Euler]

Don't forget Econ 101. Alternates and substitutes have as much effect on price. i.e. the cost of building Linux from the ground-up, or using a substitute BSD-liscensed product. like.. oh.. say.. BSD.

This while thing looks shady though.. A post on some board for a $50K deal?

Re:Nothing

[nacturation]

"In btw" In by the way??? Do you mean 'and by the way' or something??? C'mon now! Thats just... bad.

Perhaps he's trying to put it into DNS format?

IN BTW 127.0.0.1
IN BTW2 12.34.56.78

Re:Nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

But this isn't about the linux kernel itself - it's about a special license for the linux kernel. And someone already offered $50,000.

Which is more than nothing.

If someone offers me $10,000 for my car, then my car has a value of at least $10,000 at that point in time... even if I don't decide to sell!

Re:Nothing

[OneArmedMan]

I dont mean this to be personal, so please dont be offened. i'm just using you ( and your wife ) as an example ...

Value of anything is *NOT* based on reality, its based on the perception of reality.

If something is perceived to have value then it has value, and vice-versa..

Quite "They also think my wife is worth nothing I might add. I however think she is priceless, as is my son."

This is true for you.. because in your reality your wife and son are very important to you and are irreplaceable ( spl ) and therefor are priceless to you.

To me however, ( purely because i dont know you or your family ) , you , your wife and your son have no value or meaning to me at all , and are therefor worthless.

To give another example,
Diamonds are perceived to have extreamly high value and are perceived to be extreamly rare, how ever this is not the case. Diamonds are more prolific than say rubies and emeralds ( spl ) , but because of marketing and market control by Deboers they are perceived to have a higher value by most people.

( ps , sorry to be rude towards your family, is was just an example, no offence intended )

Re:Nothing

[lew3004]

Dude, yes. If you fix your own flat tire it has a net sum of zero value to anyone else. If you choose to fix your neighbor's computer the net sum is still zero except for her. The bottom line here is choice....if you choose to give away your time then your net value is nothing. If you choose to market yourself in the form of a job than your time is worth something. Maybe you should become a car mechanic....or a politician.

Re:Nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

Something that cannot be protected, such as a rare diamond in a vault somewhere, cannot be sold with the idea that it's yours now. So we have SCO telling us that the kernel is theirs, and that when I go to the bookstore and buy a copy of SuSE linux, I would owe SCO an amount they set as "owner" too. If it's there for me to buy, then It's mine, just like a "copy" of a Honda Accord automobile. I can't use 'em all, just mine. If I did, then why would there be a "service and parts department". Should they just sit around and wait for me, and me alone, to call saying I needed some service on my Honda. I doubt it. So, it is to my advantage that there are perhaps millions of copies, all supporting a setup where I get to have my turn at service if I need it. Same thing with a Linux kernel. It gets updated, all to my benefit, and the millions of others also. If I and I alone "owned" it, why would it be updated? Should I then want to build a nice building in my backyard for the kernel developers, since it's mine? If I then decide "no", then the kernel is loose again, and everyone can and should have their own copy. They just have to pay me. SuSE says the kernel is free, it's YAST and the nice box that I'm paying for.

Re:Nothing

[walt-sjc]

Sure it is. If I buy a router based on BSD code but with vendor modifications, I have a router that I can't modify the code on and retain all the functionality.

In contrast, if I buy a linux GPL router, I get all the source including the vendor modifications since the GPL requires that the vendor release the code.

Which one is more restrictive? The original BSD code is useless as it's missing all the changes that make it work with the router hardware and featureset. Furthermore, lets say the router manufacturer stops supporting the product. With the BSD version, I'm toast. With the Linux GPL version I (or the community of router users) can take up support. This is a huge issue that can't be ignored - it's the main difference between BSD and GPL licenses.

Will will never know how advanced BSD would have been if developers were required to return improvements back to the community. BSD is much older than linux yet is about at the same point technologically. In 5 years, I expect Linux to be more more advanced where BSD gets only a modest improvement.

Re:Nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm arguing that there IS MARKET VALUE, wtf. Look, forget it. Just forget it.

Re:Nothing

[Edie O'Teditor]

Presumably he was referring to the laughably weak state of the Turkish lira - there's about 1.5 million to the dollar.

Re:Nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

The woman, I will geeve you Five Hundred Amerecan Dollars for her.

Re:Nothing

[WhiteDragon]

wow .. comparing the linux kernel to the mona lisa seems like comparing a field of engines to works of DaVinci ..

This is one of the strangest analogies I have seen. Since the Mona Lisa is a work of DaVinci, it seems that you are saying the linux kernel is like a field of engines. I guess I just don't understand what that analogy means.

Re:Nothing

[haruchai]

I'll look that up. So, what would that say about the
claims of the BSA and RIAA?

Don't know

[kc0re]

I wouldn't know what to do with it, but can you "buy" it? It's open source, anyone can change it... What would happen if Microsoft "bought" it. Or bought the rights to it.. Just some what if's.

Re:Don't know

[Deorus]

You can buy the kernel, but not change its license. Why? GPL forces you to stick with the same license in its current or optionally any newer version. Only by agreeing with everyone who contributed with code to the kernel they could change the license, and I don't think everyone would agree with that besides SCO (if they really have any code in there :-P).

Re:Don't know

[at2000]

Why can't you just buy the copyright of all code, by asking all authors to transfer their copyright, in writing, to you? Then you own the kernel, and you can distribute in BSD license if you wish.

Re:Don't know

[OohAhh]

"Just buy the copyright of all code"? I suppose you could try if you liked. Firstly you'd have to track down all the contributors, or their heirs and assignees. Then you'd have to convince all these owners to accept your offer. Then assuming that, amongst all the others Linus Torvalds and Alan Cox, agreed you would could do what you say. No, it isn't going to happen is it?

Re:Don't know

[at2000]

Suppose you are OSDL, and you promised to migrate all code to GPLv3 after the acquisition, I think it is not as difficult as you thought.

Re:Don't know

[OohAhh]

This doesn't even begin to address the "little" problem of finding all the codes owners. Unlike commercial software there is no central ownership of code by a single entity such as a company, so you'd need to track down all of them. Also don't forget that a number of coders may have a political preference for GPL over BSD licenses, so their code may have to be removed or replaced. This will often be impractical or even impossible where this code has been used as the basis for other code. You'd have to do this if you just couldn't find them too.

You are also assuming there would be an overwhelming advantage to switching to GPLv3, this doesn't seem likely to me. Even if there were the code may be able to be switched to it anyway as it would still be a GPL license. I doubt there would be any great problem if this wasn't possible anyway as it's current GPL version is quite adequate.

It it quite obvious you have no idea of the scale of the problem of tracking down all the owners and getting their consent.

Re:Don't know

[at2000]

But we witnessed how Mozilla is becoming trilicensed. Could we have imagined that a few years ago?

ooooh

[LiquidCoooled]

612million / [Developers.Count] = $650 (per machine)

Who woulda thunk it..... ;)

Re:ooooh

[SoTuA]

Who woulda thunk it..... ;)

** shakes head in bafflement **

That the SCO brand is worth US$49? Not me...

Re:ooooh

[zonker]

one meeeelion dollars?

sloccount is no measure to go by

[Anonymous Coward]

sloccount is no measure to go by, its calcuations have no correlation to any software project i have worked on -- its output is mere fantasy!

perhaps...

[Anonymous Coward]

we should get a better estimate by asking the nice folks at SCO. They seem to know much about this.

Re:perhaps...

[Anonymous Coward]

Or the people who were prosecuting Kevin Mitnick, and valued some of the information he "stole" at $80,000, when it was for sale in the company bookstore for $30 a copy, or whatever ludicrous valuation on things they came up with.

One of the things you learn in preparing a business plan for a self-owned business is, to be fair, you have to put a dollar guesstimate on the time you put into the enterprise, which is generally related to the rate you would likely bring in doing what you are currently doing for $.

The usual thing is for people starting a business to say, 'we made $300 sales this week', but they've spent 80 hours at the store, farm, shop, whatever, making that $300, and in hourly wage value alone, those sales are worth less than $4.00/hr... Sure, "sweat equity" counts for something, sort of like working for stock options, but...

Re:perhaps...

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone in Utah replied "$699"...

You just can't...

[numbware]

... put a price on it. Linux is priceless. Mac OSX is $50.00. Windows is a paperclip and a bubblegum wrapper.

Re:You just can't...

[eln]

I thought Windows was the cost of a blank CD...

Re:You just can't...

[OrangeTide]

Well people gobble up Windows for $150. So I'm guessing that's it's market value.

Linux-based operating systems rarely sell for more than $50. And more often than not people just download it for free. Of course that's with GPL. Without GPL I'm sure it would be worth 600M or whatever. GPL seems to really devalue your software.

Re:You just can't...

[malfunct]

I thought that was the point? To make it free (as in the everyone should have access to it sense, and yes I know thats a slightly warped view of the GPL but fits for linux). I thought many people, especially academics and hobbiests from the 60's and 70's thought OS's should be free in all definitions of the word.

Re:You just can't...

[rts008]

That can't be right, a blank cd won't crash yer systen, or let in ALL teh scriptkiddies that want to play in yer box! But IMHO, you be real close to teh value of Windoze!

Re:You just can't...

[Bongoots]

For everything else, there's Mastercard.

Re:You just can't...

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if value to you is money.

In that case stick to buying prostitutes.

Re:You just can't...

[merdark]

No... that's Linux. Optionally, you can install over the network, hence it requires no price. It's priceless, see?

Re:You just can't...

[asciiRider]

Let's not foget that people pay $150 for a license TO USE Windows, not to own, or re-distribute, or re-license, etc etc etc...

Re:You just can't...

[OrangeTide]

I totally treat my Windows licenses as transferable. I probably don't have a legal leg to stand on, but the permission to use license itself feels a lot like property. Oh well, Microsoft can come after me for buying WinXP for a computer I built and then giving the computer and OS to a relative. We'll see how well that flies for PR.

Other open source projects...

[gmuslera]

could have a monetary value attached depending of certain criteria. i.e. for Slashcode, if is sold as Weapon of Mass Destruction (of other web sites, a.k.a. slashdotting) could worth millons!

Re:Other open source projects...

[LiquidCoooled]

As a standalone CMS it has its merits, but is mostly harmless, its destructive elements are distributed in numerous apartments and basements around the world munching on twinkies and drinking 7up!

Re:Other open source projects...

[niteice]

if is sold as Weapon of Mass Destruction (of other web sites, a.k.a. slashdotting)

Go tell GWB he's gonna have to squeeze the US Army into the internet...

Obligatuary quote

[rastakid]

"They want me to be a whore!" -- Linus Torvalds.

Re:Obligatuary quote

[Anonymous Coward]

and since you are giving it away for free, that makes you a slut!!!!

do i need to pay?

[Anonymous Coward]

can i get away by not paying any fees?

what if my customer didnt know that & so he didnt complain?

612 millions?

[Pig Hogger]

Is that by the same accounting used by SCO???

Re:612 millions?

[kawika]

No, it's the same accounting used by Microsoft and the RIAA. If someone has a copy then you assume they would pay (or could be forced to pay) the full retail price of the product as defined by its maker.

That's not the way the market works though. Only a small fraction of people pay full asking price. The others pay less via sales, rebates, coupons, volume discounts, or other incentives. And yes, some will pay zero by stealing it.

The key to maximizing profit is not to have one price, but to have a spectrum of prices that extracts the most money that each group is willing to pay...

Have to say it...

[rampant mac]

Cue the Austin Powers quotes.

Now, I have to wonder, how much would it cost to pay Microsoft to GPL their Office product file formats?

Re:Have to say it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Give them 10 years or so.... Bill might take a couple of hundred dollars just to keep his lights on.

Re:Have to say it...

[k98sven]

Now, I have to wonder, how much would it cost to pay Microsoft to GPL their Office product file formats?

What do you mean? Release GPL code for reading/writing these file formats, or do you mean release the specifications for these file formats (in which case the GPL would be an unsuitable license since it's not source code).

As for the latter.. that might become available for free.. If the EU antitrust guys do their job properly.

Easy answer...

[GedConk]

The worst that could happen is a fork and a name change.

One Billion Dollars

[NoSuchGuy]

Someone wrote the kernel ist estimated about USD 1 billion. [Don't know source use ggogle]

about 8000 man years x USD 125,000 = USD 1 Billion

Best of all:
You can get it for free!

Or for a limited time offer of only USD 699,00 from a special company

Pfff... 50 grand...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're going to embark on thought experiments, do it without utterly laughable numbers. Perhaps you could get one complex driver for 50000, but not a kernel.

According to SCO..

[puke76]

It's worth about $699 per CPU! Don't tell these litigious bastards that at that price, it's way too cheap! :)

What's the Linux kernel worth?

[Anonymous Coward]

That depends on what price you put on freedom.

In an increasingly technologically based society and future, the GNU license provides the theoretical foundation for freedom.

It's Linux, and all the other Free (as in speech) software that gives us the practical foundation to realise this freedom.

What price on that?

Merkey's offer doesn't make sense to me ...

[Anonymous Coward]

After an offer by one Jeff V. Merkey to pay 50K USD for a BSD-licensed copy of Linux

Why would they do that? What advantage is there to the BSD vs GPL licenses?

The only advantage is that if you redistribute or sell software that is GPLed, you have to provide source code - with BSD you don't.

So, Merkey's company wants to sell modified Linux without providing source code to the modifications. While I doubt the modifications are worth that much, he apparently does.

Why wouldn't Merkey use FreeBSD for the application he wants to sell? Almost all linux software is available for FreeBSD, and then he wouldn't have to pay $50,000 for a license.

Or can someone explain this to me?

Re:Merkey's offer doesn't make sense to me ...

[TheRealMindChild]

The advantage is they don't HAVE to share the source if they distribute the binary. I can't be sure their exact use, but something that comes to mind is wanting to market a canned OS that uses the linux kernel. Selling it like windows would mean that they would have to make the source available... but there are a lot of instances where it simply makes no sense to give people the ability to fork your code... especially in an OS.

Re:Merkey's offer doesn't make sense to me ...

[Ubergrendle]

Linux has more mindshare among corporate managers and business leaders. BSD is a very similar animal all things considered, but the minute you have to say "Berkley" to describe the product your business partners will run away screaming. "Some adolescant university pet project to run my core systems??? Are you nuts!?!?". Attempts are rationality are met with a Dilbert-esque anti-logic field that are impenetrable to all but the most diabolical methods (e.g. FUD, free golf games, vendor lunches).

Re:Merkey's offer doesn't make sense to me ...

[John Harrison]

I'm going to be intentionally vague here so that I don't have to post as an AC.

About two years ago I was speaking to the developer who had ported Linux to a particular hardware security device. I asked him why he had gone with Linux instead of OpenBSD as his base. He stated that it was his preference to go with OpenBSD, or any of the flavors of BSD, but he went with Linux because the company is publically committed to Linux and Linux has a marketing value that the BSDs do not. It is better to say, "Our gadget now runs Linux! Won't your developers be happy?" than it is to say, "Our gagdet now runs OpenBSD! Won't your developers be happy?"

Basically there are often non-technical reasons for wanting to use Linux even when some other OS would be a better technical fit.

Re:Merkey's offer doesn't make sense to me ...

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Apple OS X is based on a BSD licenced product, and I've never heard of that excuse used against it.

"Some adolescant university pet project to run my core systems???"

Isn't this the same opinion PHB's had of Linux?

And will there be headaches from people that "report" the lack of source to Linus, FSF, et. al?

Re:Merkey's offer doesn't make sense to me ...

[hackstraw]

The only advantage is that if you redistribute or sell software that is GPLed, you have to provide source code - with BSD you don't.

Yup. And the number commercial products with BSD derived code in them is much greater than GPLed code because of this.

Why wouldn't Merkey use FreeBSD for the application he wants to sell? Almost all linux software is available for FreeBSD, and then he wouldn't have to pay $50,000 for a license.

Or can someone explain this to me?

1st, he wants the kernel not almost all linux software.

Maybe FreeBSD does not run on all or any of the desired hardware platforms, maybe he likes (some aspects) of Linux better than FreeBSD, maybe I should start charging a large fee to rationalize irrational human behavior?

Re:Merkey's offer doesn't make sense to me ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Device drivers?

Suppose that Merkey's outfit wants to embed Linux in some device, for which they would write drivers or pay to have drivers written. They may also need other changes to the kernel which they do or themselves or get done privately. In this case, they want to close the source to prevent competitors ripping off their custom code. That's their advantage.

Why they couldn't do this with FreeBSD, I don't know.

Note that although $50K is trivial as a one-off payment, they probably have to pay this recurrently in order to get kernel fixes; possibly several times a year if they want all the fixes and upgrades. Thus a nice income stream for kernel.org if they go with it.

Re:Merkey's offer doesn't make sense to me ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, for apple, the university-esque, counter-culture vibe works.

Of course, most of the same PHBs would run screaming from the room if you said "lets run that server app on an Apple platform."

Sorry kids, Apple does NOT have a great deal of mindshare in the enterprise market. I'd be rich if I had a dollar for every time I've heard the comment from upper management at various businesses that they have to get "those people off those Macs" and the words "those people" are heavily emphasized.

Re:Merkey's offer doesn't make sense to me ...

[elemental23]

the minute you have to say "Berkley" to describe the product your business partners will run away screaming. "Some adolescant university pet project to run my core systems??? Are you nuts!?!?"

I hope they're not running BIND then.

Re:Merkey's offer doesn't make sense to me ...

[bedessen]

Because it makes it possible to create all sorts of derivative works or products based on linux while giving the big middle finger to the community.

Want to create a wireless router/gateway with rich functionality but can't/won't publish the driver source? Sure, just take this wacko BSD copy of the linux kernel and write your proprietary hardware driver, then ship the product. No need to interact with the community, no need to provide the source to that driver. Most importantly, there's no need to pussyfoot around that userspace/kernelspace boundary and associated headaches, as you currently have to do if you want tobuild a proprietary product around linux.

Got some hardware thing that needs TCP/IP filtering/firewall capability? Just lift iptables code. You don't have to bother trying to do it "the right way", you just copy and paste the code, without guilt. No need to donate your spiffy new features and extentions back to the community -- screw them, this is business. As has been pointed out elsewhere in the comments, use of the GPLd iptables code in commercial products happens VERY often and has led to a number of settlements based on GPL complaints. All of that hassle goes away if it's BSD-licensed.

In fact I'm sure there are tons of embedded companies that would love to get their paws on linux in an truly "unencumbered" form. You have complete control to add functionality to either kernel or user-space, without having to go through all the pains of binary-only drivers. No need to fuss with satisfying users who want the source, no need to worry about violating your NDAs on hardware specs. Just a 100% pure tested, proven, scalable platform that is yours to use for any purpose whatsoever without restriction. Hell I'm sure $50k is chump change to most companies to never have to worry about licensing issues for a product.

Re:Merkey's offer doesn't make sense to me ...

[Anonymous Coward]

After an offer by one Jeff V. Merkey to pay 50K USD for a BSD-licensed copy of Linux

Why would they do that?

Consider this. If kernel.org ever ends up in a lawsuit, it will likely claim to be a non-commercial research organization. If they sell rights to the Linux kernel, the federal government has all kinds of regulations involving interstate commerce that could potentially affect kernel.org.

Poll!

[Black Parrot]

My favorite kernel is:

• Linux
• BSD
• Klink

Re:Poll!

[zoloto]

klink? something from the KDE krowd I suspect!

-ps. I have 5 gmail invites left. post here with your email address backwards and i'll send one to you. First 5 posted here (not emailed) get them. I'm trying desperately to get rid of em

Re:Poll!

[Anonymous Coward]

Put them here.
http://isnoop.net/gmailomatic.php

Re:Poll!

[Anonymous Coward]

ok, it's worth a shot... moc.oohay@sorbsuoires

Re:Poll!

[Anonymous Coward]

why fret about getting rid of them?

it doesn't matter.

Re:Poll!

[Anonymous Coward]

zero_joker@mail.ru

thx!

Re:Poll!

[Anonymous Coward]

com.yahoo@baileymike2000

Re:Poll!

[Anonymous Coward]

ten.moklet@sepus

or

net.telkom@supes

xnahT

Re:Poll!

[Anonymous Coward]

moc.oohay@0002ekimyeliab

Re:Poll!

[Anonymous Coward]

ac.wahs@tegrofm

I must be the only person in the world never to get a gmail invite.

Re:Poll!

[datadriven]

klink? something from the KDE krowd I suspect!

I suppose you're not old enought to remember "Hogan's Heroes"

Re:Poll!

[Anonymous Coward]

ude.rethul@10ejlliw

Re:Poll!

[Anonymous Coward]

sorry, i meant for that to be

ude.rehtul@10ejlliw

Re:Poll!

[Anonymous Coward]

moc.tfosorcim@gllib

Thank you!

Re:Poll!

[Anonymous Coward]

Please send my gmail invite to...

ten.peedzllab@liamgdeeni

Re:Poll!

[zoloto]

i guess you didn't get my joke :) HH was good though. didn't watch it too much. caught all the re-runs

As noted in the article...

[GillBates0]

The cost of a product is not necessarily equal to the cost of developing it.

Or was that Steff Murky?

[RealAlaskan]

After an offer by one Jeff V. Merkey to pay 50K USD for a BSD-licensed copy of Linux ...

Sure it wasn't Stef Murkey?

Re:Or was that Steff Murky?

[tetranitrate]

Sure it wasn't Stef Murkey?

Sure that wasn't Stef Murky

P.S. Same link as parent.

Re:Or was that Steff Murky?

[dj_super_dude]

hmm from the link I'm guessing he was sure

$600 M is ridiculous

[neonstz]

When people buy commercial 3rd party libraries, they do that because it is cheaper to buy the 3rd party library than to develop everything themselves. I'm pretty sure Qt/Win32 is worth more than the ~$2000 or something you have to pay for a single Enterprise lisence.

(I assume the guy who posted on the linux kernel list didn't mean that those who paid $50 K for a snapshot get the rights to distribute the source with a "BSD style" lisence).

Re:$600 M is ridiculous

[CaptainPinko]

what else could it mean? If I get a snapshot of Linux undera BSD license I can do with it whatevera BSD license allows which does allow me to redistribute under a BSD lciense!!!

Re:$600 M is ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

He made it quite clear that he does in fact want a BSD style license, IOW the right to distribute binaries (and source, if he so wishes).

One thing that I could imagine the kernel hackers might agree to is a binary-only license for use in one product. But that would still cost orders of magnitude more than 50k$.

Re:$600 M is ridiculous

[CheechBG]

I think you are missing the point. To have access to the entirety of the MS source code would be worth I would think a hell of a lot more than 2 grand. Granted, I don't think MS would charge 600 million for this, but if they would sell it I think you might have 600 companies all willing to pay 1 million for it.

Re:$600 M is ridiculous

[neonstz]

He made it quite clear that he does in fact want a BSD style license, IOW the right to distribute binaries (and source, if he so wishes).

He writes that he wants a "BSD style" lisence. However, I'm not sure that is what he wants. (Because his offer doesn't make much sense to me if he wants the code with full BSD (style) lisence).

No price

[joxeanpiti]

Linux has no price. Is not for sale.

Eh?

[niko9]

It's like trying to put monetary value on a Van Gogh or a Matisse. The Linux kernel is truly priceless. You could never get that kind of collaboration even with the most highly paid software engineers, beacuse they don't do it for money, neither did Van Gogh.

Re:Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

> It's like trying to put monetary value on a Van Gogh or a Matisse.

1. Works by those two masters are sold all the time. Maybe not Night on the Rhone or Blue Nude, but certainly others.

2. The insurance company backing the above two works most certainly has put a monetary value on them.

Re:Eh?

[papasui]

I bet Van Gogh would trade it for a some absinthe and a human ear.

Re:Eh?

[lostguy]

I know you're just trolling, but don't assume that your lack of knowledge regarding economics is an indicator of the absence of economic theory and/or fact.

Almost everything has a value that can be expressed as a monetary price. Sometimes it's very near $0, because no one is willing to pay for it in the markets to which the seller has access (want to buy my runny poop? What about my runny poop mixed with the fermented poop of a million people?). Sometimes it's effectively infinite, like, say, the casket holding your dear, departed mother.

There are several bodies of theory regarding calculating prices for things with no objective value. These aren't limited just to "whatever the market will bear".

Linux has the advantage that you can calculate the economic impact in a pretty straightforward fashion without a lot of the cost-of-emotion math.

How much time has been spent on building Linux? How many people have obtained funds for selling Linux distributions? How much time has been spent/saved with Linux-based solutions? How much would it cost to reimplement Linux independently?

Re:Eh?

[ickoonite]

Is it really that easy to put a monetary value on Linux though? It's such a nebulous thing, having so many contributors and being quite an important unifying thread for so many dissatisfied technorati.

What I'm trying to suggest is that, like the works of Van Gogh or Matisse, Linux is perhaps greater than the sum of its parts. Even if you were to cleanroom reimplement Linux, that only takes care of the engineering side. We live in a world where intellectual property is king, so shouldn't some financial regard be given to the sometimes simply wonderful ideas, the ways of doing things, and so on.

As Microsoft may well find out in the years ahead, you just can't buy the kind of dedication for and belief in some of the open source projects out there. True, most people do have a price, but they will work harder and better when working for themselves.

iqu :)

Priceless : )

[essreenim]

..thats its value for me.
Life-time (eternal) access to the best OS kernel in the world - for free!!

Mu

[Vainglorious Coward]

What is air worth? Some things have great value, but simply trying to measure that value in dollars is to misunderstand the nature of that value.

Re:Mu

[1000101]

Good point. The problem is that business doesn't work that way. You need actual monetary values for all of your business property, requirements, etc. Are the managers supposed to say, "We have 1,000 machines running Linux. Our infrastructure is priceless!"?

Re:Mu

[Anonymous Coward]

Comparing the Linux kernel to air is to deeply misunderstand the value of either Linux or air. Unless you can breathe FreeBSD.

(Insert HURD/vapor joke here...)

Re:Mu

[Fnkmaster]

While I appreciate what you are saying, the thing is you can assign a value to a product by asking the question "what would I have to pay a bunch of people to build this"? I don't really see how you can do that with air, since it's not produced by humans and thus not subject to monetary or economic motivations.

I agree that Linux's value to the community is "priceless" in that you can't really quantify very easily things like sense of community, the feeling of freedom and so on (well, you can generally quantify them for any one person in individual utilitarian terms, but that doesn't translate very well to dollars). But assigning a dollar value to a product in terms of creation-cost equivalence is not a completely unreasonable thing to do.

Re:Mu

[Anonymous Coward]

What is air worth? Air is like Sex.

Air becomes highly important just a Sex becomes highly important proportionally to the time of not getting any.

Re:Mu

[screenrc]

Lots of posters are quick to quote 'several millions'
for the cost developement. Clearly, you are
out of touch: my organization is spending 25 million
per year just to maintain 200k of code. With this
in mind, the total cost of developing and maninting
the Linux kernel over that last 13 years should
be in the order of several billions (not millions).

Re:Mu

[Anonymous Coward]

Um... are you employed?
Infrastructure is a hell-of-a lot more than an operating system.

Re:Mu

[Anonymous Coward]

No, to an accountant, the COST of an asset is its acquisition expense plus those other maintenance and time expenses.

The VALUE of an asset is the amount of money it is expected to return over its lifetime.

The principle that things can be WORTH more than they COST is the fundamental purpose of spending money.

Re:Mu

[garcia]

What is air worth? Some things have great value, but simply trying to measure that value in dollars is to misunderstand the nature of that value.

Just ask the WTO, they seem to be able to put a price on water. Why not air too?

Re:Mu

[ctr2sprt]

What's air worth? The same as everything else: whatever people are willing to pay for it. Most people will never have a need to get air any way other than by breathing in, and so most people will never pay a cent for air. But some people, like divers and astronauts, certainly will pay for it, because it's not that simple to breathe underwater or in space.

Don't think of money as having intrinsic value, or objects as having intrinsic price tags. Money is a convenient abstraction which allows us to assign relative worth to objects. I mean, imagine that air is suddenly no longer plentiful. We have to buy it. Now it's still fairly cheap, say $50/month. The end of the month comes around and you've got only enough either to pay your air bill or buy a computer game, but not both. Which do you do? Well, duh; you pay your air bill, since you'd like to continue breathing. That's where the you assign the relative worth. A game costing as much as a month's supply of air does not suggest that the two have equal value.

Re:Mu

[Anonymous Coward]

Does a cow have the buddha nature?
Mu.

(posting anon cuz i'm way offtopic, but man, this is one of my favorite jokes ever. course, it works better out loud, rather than on the screen.....)

Re:Mu

[Tony-A]

"We have 1,000 machines running Linux. Our infrastructure is priceless!"

You have 1,000 machines running Linux.
I have 1,000 machines running Linux. (I wish)
There is no reason to assume that the value (or the cost) of your 1,000 machines is the same as mine.

Business property is generally valued at (depreciated) acquisition cost which does not necessarily have any relation to a fair market value (although there is incentive to revalue or dispose of anything booked substantially above current fair market value).

What a company is actually worth is not the same as the sum of the "actual monetary values for all of your business property".

Re:Mu

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly..
in Bill Hicks style..

"If your in Advertising or Marketing, kill yourself. Seriously, kill yourself. [...] Quit putting a godamm dollar sign on every fucking thing on this planet!"

BSD License not IP Rights

[Anonymous Coward]

They are asking for a single license, not ownership of the kernel itself. The kernel would remain available in GPL and this one company would be buying the right not to contribute their changes back to the community.

If they sold the rights to the IP then another company could determine how it is licenced and make future versions closed source. GPL does not mean it is public, as US laws require the copyright to belong to specific people. This company could buy the right to develop their own derived version for 50K.

I would say that a price around 1 million would be more in line for a licence and that a price much higher (billion+) for the complete IP rights.

Keep in mind what they are buying. It would allow them to build their own Mac OS X based on Linux and licence it under their terms without giving back to Linux. It would not allow them to deny other distros from using Linux for free under GPL.

the answer is...

[k3v0]

MU!

As being free is

[Anonymous Coward]

one of the things that make linux valuable this discussion is pretty senseless. Now of course it would also be valuable if it was closed source, but being free and thus having all the value added that open source provides is one of the key assets of linux.

Since the kernel is free...

[Anonymous Coward]

... what purpose does this article serve besides speculation and argument (two totally useless things)? What a waste of bandwidth and resources. Typical /. crap.

Voodoo Economics Again?

[reporter]

Are we entering voodoo economics again? The value of a good (e.g. IBM p690) or service (e.g. labor) is principally determined by the market when the market is relatively free. The forces that determine the dollar value are incredibly complex, and there is no way for a supercomputer or a human being to model them accurately.

We can, to some extent, model the overall economy and predict economic growth, but such models are imprecise. Further, modeling the overall economy is easier than predicting the precise value of a particular good or service because the overall economy is a lumped parameter, the net result of a multitude of forces. Consider predicting the price of an individual stock versus predicting the price of the S&P 500. The latter is hard but roughly do-able; the former is impossible.

So, attempting to calculate the value of the Linux kernel is just another exercise in voodoo economics (tm).

If we really could calculate precisely the value of the Linux kernel, then the implications would be enormous. We could then calculate the true price of all goods and services in the USA. There would be no need for a market economy. The government could then control the economy in much the same fashion that Lenin proposed. The government could then give everyone a number representing each person's correct salary and, also, assign the correct price to everything. There would be no unemployment or recession.

Nirvana.

I Thought This Was Already Established

[Lethyos]

Clearly it's $699.

sell linux ? who can do that ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Developers and companies who chose to work on linux instead of another OS (Say BSD) is the license. They don't want anyone to take the source and do whatever they want then release it in the market as closed-source. I choose the GPL as a license because it forces other people to publish thier modifications.

Invites

[missing000]

You are not alone.

Re:Invites

[zoloto]

yeah, i feel the pain.

Price of a shrink-wrapped Mandrake distro: $39.95

[Anonymous Coward]

Price of a set of blank CDs to copy the distro: $3

Watching Steve Ballmer fly around the world making promises and cutting the price of Windows to compete: priceless

High Flying

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

In terms of the amount of man-hours, resources, user time, and the complexity of it, the linux kernel is probobly worth about as much as the complete blueprints of the Airbus A380.

Strange to think of it in these terms, but when you think about it the kernel is at this point at the same, or a greater level of complexity than an aircraft design, and is probobly in use by more people than the average aircraft model at this point. What is the current population of the republic of linux these days anyway?

Re:High Flying

[mitchell_pgh]

The only difference is...

When you code poorly... you might have to reboot.

When you design poorly... you might end up in a cemetery.

No price is high enough

[IGnatius T Foobar]

No price is high enough for the Linux kernel. If Linux is ever translicensed to anything other than the GPL, it paves the way for Microsoft to eventually come up with their own closed-source version of it -- at no cost to them. From there, they could "embrace and extend" it and drive the GPL version of Linux into obscurity.

Think about that, and then tell me how much the Linux kernel is worth. $50,000? A few hundred million? A billion or more? Nope -- it's like a MasterCard commercial, in real life. "Having an operating system Microsoft can never own: PRICELESS."

I suppose I could get a "funny" mod by saying "There are some things money can't buy; for everything else, there's Microsoft" but I'm actually dead serious here.

Re:No price is high enough

[bedessen]

If that were a desire of microsoft then why haven't try tried to "embrace and extend" FreeBSD? I see no closed source "Microsoft FreeBSD" on the market. Same with all the other *BSDs. I think you're just trying to find things to blame them for here when the fact is that there are plenty of robust BSD-licensed operating systems that Microsoft has no desire to touch. I see no reason why they'd start with linux.

pretty safe offer

[Kwantus]

Jeff's offer:

This offer must be accepted by **ALL** copyright holders...

That'll be harder than getting agreement on the Charlottetown accord (a thing in which any given Canadian could find something to hate)...A) you'll never find *ALL* the copyright holders - plus the complication some have died, who of their heirs has the say? B) of the hundreds you can find it's sure a few will say No on principle.

Re:pretty safe offer

[Anonymous Coward]

When source is committed to the Linux kernel, isn't copyright explicitly transferred to Linus?

Re:pretty safe offer

[Entrope]

No. Some groups require that (most notably the Free Software Foundation), but many do not. Linus and the other kernel folks are part of the latter group.

While there are some benefits to having a single copyright holder, you need a lot of bookkeeping to track everyone's copyright assignments and a lot of work to make sure they are proper. US copyright law requires that any copyright assignment be in writing and identify (in writing) exactly for what works copyrights are being assigned. Many European countries recognize "natural rights" or "droits d'auteur" that cannot be assigned to a third party. Some programmers have employment contracts that stipulate all software copyrights for things they write while employed belong to their employer, even if the software was written on the programmer's own time. Et cetera.

Linus decided either the effort was not worth it or that there were other benefits to not requiring copyright assignments. The Free Software Foundation does go to the effort to work all the details out. If you (or anyone else) wants to have a single copyright holder for a GPLed program, I encourage you to assign that copyright to the FSF. It saves a lot of effort on your part and ensures that the copyright holder has both the resources and resources to protect the software.

Re:pretty safe offer

[Anonymous Coward]

No.

Re:pretty safe offer

[FauxPasIII]

> you'll never find *ALL* the copyright holders

Hm. I thought that by submitting the code to LKML for inclusion, you were yielding your copyright to Linus... if that's not the
case, then I will halt this deal based on the 8 lines or so I contributed to the software raid startup code =D.

Re:pretty safe offer

[LnxAddct]

Nope, you don't have sign away your life just to contribute something. This is part of why Linux is so successfull.
Regards,
Steve

Re:pretty safe offer

[bedessen]

There's nothing that says the kernel is an all-or-nothing venture. If they convinced owners of 90% of the core code to re-license then they could just nuke the rest of the code from the tree and either a) disable support for those devices/options or b) wait for or pay for someone to rewrite those parts.

That said I don't think any of the key core developers is going to go anywhere near this any time soon, so your overall point is valid. However, there is no requirement to find and convince _every_ copyright holder. Just delete the code that you can't license. If it's required for your purposes then rewrite it, otherwise just drop support for that. Any kernel developer that refused the offer would only be holding up their individual code contributions from inclusion in the bsd tree, not the rest of the kernel. Naturally, people with significant code would be in that list however, so again I'm not saying this is realistic.

Re:pretty safe offer

[Kadmium]

that the copyright holder has both the resources and resources to protect the software.

Wow. I wonder how they find the time to manage all those resources.

Re:pretty safe offer

[Entrope]

Wow. I wonder how they find the time to manage all those resources.

Impressive trick, isn't it? I meant "both the resources and experience" -- thanks for the catch.

Priceless... essentially

[Gopal.V]

• Windows XP - 200 USD .
• Windows 2000 Professional - 290 USD
• Mac OS X - 120 USD

Linux - priceless .

Of course, unless you consider all those hours you pored over google results and irc chats about *that* bug in the 2.2 kernel, waay back in '99.

I've invested too much time and effort in Linux to consider it "Free" in an economic sense. But , yeah it pays to be the admin , not developers.
But, I've sent my share of patches ....

Re:Priceless... essentially

[xirtam_work]

the source code to Windows XP, Windows 2000 Professional or Mac OS X under a BSD license would cost considerably more than the prices you quote. Just because that's how much a retail license costs don't reflect the value of the source code.

Re:Priceless... essentially

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux is expensive. It's ruining my grades in school because I spend all my time dicking around with my system instead of doing the extremely boring, annoying mundane stuff passed off as a knowledge exercise..

the value of Linux's kernel

[Anonymous Coward]

is worth a hell of a lot more than MSFT's Windows kernel...

can not put a price on freedom...

Why

[ajs318]

Why would you want to pay millions of dollars to buy a copy of Linux under a BSD-like licence, when there is already an operating system available under a BSD-like licence -- and it costs nothing?!

The 3-clause BSD licence is poisonous, because it allows someone effectively to turn an open-source product into a closed-source one, just by not distributing the source code. {The 2-clause variant allowing source code distribution only is fine for stuff written in interpreted languages -- but makes it inconvenient for stuff written in compiled languages. Although the degree of inconvenience is growing less as processor speeds and drive capacities improve; compiling from source is no longer the drain it once used to be. Nonetheless, ex-Windows bods expect pre-compiled binaries}.

OTOH, if a program is distributed under a 3-clause BSD licence but without source code, you would get a licence to distribute the source code if you could get the source code somehow. And decompilers will soon be a practical reality ..... decompilation belongs to the same branch of mathematical problems as shape recognition, and if it's true about modern systems being capable of picking out a face from a still photo in real-time video of a moving crowd, well, you can draw your own conclusions.

Re:Why

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm... thats the point of BSD

Re:Why

[Anonymous Coward]

Calling the BSD license "poisonous" is akin to calling the GPL "viral". Both assertions are stupid. The BSD license is designed to be completely free (where you can do anything you like with it) where the GPL is designed to keep the code open. Both have their place in the world. I, for one, happen to like the idea of freedom even if it invites some abuse. But I believe the having both styles available for users and businesses is an excellent approach.

Business should be allowed to profit from innovation.

Re:Why

[Brandybuck]

The 3-clause BSD licence is poisonous, because it allows someone effectively to turn an open-source product into a closed-source one, just by not distributing the source code.

Not "poisonous" at all. Keep your FUD out of this. While one can take BSD licensed source code and create a binary closed source product, this is not "poisonous". The orginal source code is still there. The orginal project is still there.

It would be like someone taking one apple from a free apple tree and locking it up. Are people going to be screaming "he poisoned the tree" when he locks up one apple? Of course not!

Re:Why

[jwymanm]

What if he then took that apple, genetically modified it to make it taste better and not have any seeds, and then successfully distributed the fruit everywhere so that most people demanded the new kind of apple. People could in turn only get this apple from the same guy and not distribute/share the apple with anyone else. This would prevent potential developers and users from using, modifying, and distributing the original apple. Imagine if all of the apples in and around your home town were replaced with the new kind. This happened because more people wanted, used, demanded, and developed for this kind of apple because of the modification.

Re:Why

[pclminion]

This happened because more people wanted, used, demanded, and developed for this kind of apple because of the modification.

So what you're saying is, people should not have what they want?

Re:Why

[YE]

Of course! People should only have Free (I don't have an even more capital F letter on my keyboard) stuff, not good stuff, cheap stuff, attractive stuff or technically advanced stuff! Just ask St. IGNUtius...

Re:Why

[ajs318]

So what you're saying is, people should not have what they want?

Depends, really, What if the thing that one person wants stops someone else from having what they want?

Up to the American Civil War, if you lived in the Southern Confederate states, it was legal to own slaves. That meant that in theory, you were more free than in the North where you were not allowed to own slaves. However, any slaves you owned would be less free than you; so the average level of freedom per person -- if you could measure it -- would be less in the Confederate states than the average level of freedom in the Union states.

In the same way, if you take software that used to be Free and make a non-Free version, then you are making its users less Free {because they can no longer inspect and modify it}. While the Free version may well still exist, and still can be modified, history has shown that people tend to become dependent on non-Free software; especially if you distribute it for no cost {i.e. "free as in 'free beer'"}. It's a fact that most people underestimate the importance of access to source code -- until it's too late.

See also Freedom or Power? - it makes the point for me. Essential quote - "A choice of masters is not freedom".

Re:Why

[holloway]

As I understand it the GNU argument is that it's more like individual rights. Law is about satisfying the majority while protecting minority rights. The idea of GNU (again, as I understand it) is that it's a minority right to develop software and build communities around it.

While the majority may not write software, and only use it, the choice for one of them to change the software is part of the GNU belief (as I understand it). People can like what they want and do the popular thing but the minority rights shouldn't be infringed. That's the theory.

In practice, GNU has no such minority rights. Copyright is used to protect minority rights. That's where the distinction between people (majority) and the wants of individuals is made.

This may all sound loony but they're well within their current legal rights to do so.

Re:Why

[nathanh]

Not "poisonous" at all. Keep your FUD out of this. While one can take BSD licensed source code and create a binary closed source product, this is not "poisonous". The orginal source code is still there. The orginal project is still there.

The code itself is fairly useless to me. The value in a project is a sum of the code plus the number of developers plus the number of users plus the number of third party applications. Software is a dynamic "living" thing. It must be constantly tended to and improved or it figuratively dies.

The danger of BSD licensed software is that every proprietary fork reduces the number of developers and users from the original project. This increases the risk of the project dying due to lack of activity and interest. There's also an increased risk that some third party applications will only work on the proprietary fork.

The GPL legalese doesn't prevent forks but in practise it seems to guard against the damages when forks inevitably occur. The BSD projects are notorious for producing multiple incompatible forks, some of those forks being proprietary, all of them spreading the developers and users and applications ever thinner.

Re:Why

[Brandybuck]

The BSD projects are notorious for producing multiple incompatible forks, some of those forks being proprietary

The only proprietary BSD fork was BSD/OS, but that was a fork created by one of the orginal developers. And that fork actually predates any of the current free and open source BSD projects. Thus, your use of the word "notorious" borders on the disingenuous.

Re:Why

[nathanh]

The only proprietary BSD fork was BSD/OS, but that was a fork created by one of the orginal developers.

BSD/OS was not the only proprietary fork. There were literally dozens. From an article by Eugene Kim: "Indeed, most of the commercial versions of UNIX in the 1980s were based on BSD UNIX". A partial list of BSDs was prepared by Levenez for his UNIX History. And don't feel tempted to discredit or dismiss Levenez just because SCO intentionally misrepresents the information on his website. Levenez is a decent bloke who does a good job of documenting UNIX history.

And that fork actually predates any of the current free and open source BSD projects.

I fail to see what relevance that has to my comment.

Thus, your use of the word "notorious" borders on the disingenuous.

I disagree.

Re:Why

[Brandybuck]

Those commercial unices were "based on" BSD. That's much different from a fork.

Other than BSD/OS, the other Unix that was closed to BSD was SunOS. But guess who started SunOS? Yet another BSD author by the name of Bill Joy! Funny though, this fork also happened before free and complete BSD sources were available. You may think this has no relevance, but it has every relevance because you cannot fork from an open source code base if the code base is not open source!

p.s. Oh, now that I think about it, NeXT probably counts as a true fork. So there's one that forked AFTER the BSD sources got unencumbered. One point for you. But funny thing is, the next time Steve Jobs went to fork off of BSD, he bent over backwards to keep it open source. Maybe he learned a lesson with NeXT.

Re:Why

[silicon not in the v]

It would be like someone taking one apple from a free apple tree and locking it up. Are people going to be screaming "he poisoned the tree" when he locks up one apple? Of course not!

I think of it more in terms of someone providing apples with no restrictions(BSD). Someone can take those apples and make an apple pie or cobbler with it. They can sell that new product without having to disclose the recipe they used to make it. The GPL apples, however, require that if you use the apples as an ingredient in something, you must disclose your recipe if you sell or give away your cooked product.

But is this really accurate?

[stephenry]

Yes, $600 million may be an accurate value for what it would cost to develop Linux from scratch, but how often do people buy software at the price it took to build.

I could purchase a copy of windows for $200 even though it cost a couple of billions to develop. So although this figure is interesting, it really doesn't mean anything -and thats assuming the licensing issues could be overcome.

Re:But is this really accurate?

[dead sun]

Yes, $600 million may be an accurate value for what it would cost to develop Linux from scratch, but how often do people buy software at the price it took to build.

I could purchase a copy of windows for $200 even though it cost a couple of billions to develop. So although this figure is interesting, it really doesn't mean anything -and thats assuming the licensing issues could be overcome.

Sure, and you can get a copy of Linux for free. That isn't the point. You'll never get a copy of Window's source for anything reasonable, especially not with a license to change that source and redistribute binaries without that source with no strings but the purchase price.

They don't want to buy just binaries under a BSD license, that'd do nothing for them. They want the ability to make changes to Linux and distribute binaries and profit from those changes, without giving those changes back. Just a tad different than your purchasing a license to use Windows.

Re:But is this really accurate?

[Unordained]

I'm not even sure this is an accurate estimate of the cost of producing the software from scratch. I downloaded and ran sloccount against a good chunk of our code a few months ago. It reported a cost of around 4 million dollars, 16 programmers, and 2 years. We did it on an average of 3 programmers (with turn-over), in 3 years, for probably around 200k to 300k. We're underpaid (by national averages), but the point is that its version of "how much things normally cost" is at best an average, and more likely just a guesstimate. By the author's own admission (at least last time I read the docs,) sloccount uses cost-estimation algorithms no longer favored by the industry. Even slight changes in coding styles (where you put your braces, as is the case of our C++ code) can have a significant impact on the final estimate. By the method I used, as per the article, the linux kernel would take 176 million dollars to redevelop. Their other estimate was even higher. Why should I trust that estimate more?

What we could do, though, is at least tally the amount of money spent by companies for work done on linux and OSS code -- I know there are several out there who actually have spent hard cash on what is now free, and that's a minimum cost of development based on cold facts.

FreeBSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, there's a great Unix-like kernel out there with a BSD-style license: FreeBSD (and other *BSD's).

Duke Nukem Forever.....

[Anonymous Coward]

So what's that make Duke Nukem Forever worth...

100 billion dollars?

The best reply?

[magefile]

"Either lower your dosage or up it."

/me goes off to change his sig

Value of Linux to a single user

[snowtigger]

I would say that Linux (in this case, RTFA) is worth the opportunity cost of using another *BSD. That's to say the cost of modifying another kernel to doing the same thing as Linux. So $50000 sounds like a good deal to this guy. If they save a developer salary because of Linux, then $50000 is a good deal to them.

Saying Linux is worth $600M doesn't make sense to a single user, since they can opt for another kernel. But if you can find 12000 small companies, then sure.

The guy clearly wants to use the kernel in a BSD way, which I interpret as wanting to modify Linux without telling the rest of the world about how. And possibly get away from getting accused of breaking the GPL.

What I don't understand is _why_ the guy wants a BSD copy of the Linux kernel. If he wanted to add a specific feature without releasing the code, he could just add for a binary one, right ? (Just like NVidia does)

Re:Value of Linux to a single user

[Anonymous Coward]

And then it allows companies like microsoft to use linux code via the BSD tree.

It's not going to happen. Key developers have already told him to piss off.

How much Bill Gates paid for DOS to Tim Paterson?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QDOS

"By many accounts, Kildall did not handle business negotiations and left that to his former wife, Dorothy McEwen and his attorney, neither of whom was willing to sign IBM's non-disclosure agreement. In addition, they refused to modify CP/M-86, and insisted on a higher royalty than IBM proposed. As a result, IBM turned to Microsoft, which licensed 86-DOS for 25,000 USD on SCP's behalf and hired Tim Paterson to port it to the IBM-PC, which used the slower and less expensive Intel 8088 processor. IBM fixed over 300 bugs in the ported version, and wrote the user manual for it. A month before the PC's release, Microsoft purchased 86-DOS from SCP for 50,000 USD. "

Anybody willing to NOT be next Bill Gates ??

Merkey is a CHEAP BASTARD!

[WebCowboy]

Either that or he is a comp[lete moron. $50,000? I mean, come on! Bill Gates paid that amount nearly a quarter century ago for a hobbyist's CP/M knock off when he was a snot nosed kid.

The least he could've done was adjust for inflation. Add to that the fact that Linux is much more sophisticated (and way more lines of code) and any fool can see the offer was a complete joke.

Assuming Merkey was serious about the offer, The BSD license would permit Merkey to sell a commercial OS based on the Linux kernel. Obviously, if he wanted to make a BSD based OS he wouldn't have had to spend money at all--cheap bastard that he is. Yes, you can build most any application from Linux in FreeBSD, but my guess is that he might have a preference for/more familiarity with the architecture of the Linux kernel, and wants to take advantage of the larger and sometimes more mature selection of drivers. Linux is the OSS market leader as well, and finding quality developers would be easier too.

Agreed

[jpellino]

You can't get all the people in a building to agree to walk across the street for ice cream.

Never mind this deal...

Re:Agreed

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't get all the people in a building to agree to walk across the street for ice cream.

But what about icecream... and avoiding the fire that mysteriously started in the basement of said building?

Feel free to play mind games about how this metaphor could be applied to the deal mentioned here.

Makes no sense...

[CaptainPinko]

Microsoft can never own FreeBSD either. They can take all the code they want and they still won't own it. There will always be people developing for it and it will always be there.

With the GPL you make GPL software better. With BSD you make all software better. Many of us still use Windows from time to time... why wouldn't we want Windows to be better too? Even if Windows becomes better than every *BSD in every way we can still have our own functional, free (libre) operating system.

Really who past their adolescence actually cares about Linux beating Windows? They are tools, use them. You'll always have your free one so the rest doesn't matter.

Re:Makes no sense...

[mrchaotica]

With the BSD license, Microsoft can always be a step ahead of BSD, like you said.

The problem I have with this is that as long as Microsoft is ahead, *nix users will be second-class citizens. I have a vested interest in seeing microsoft dead, for the following reasons:

• Government will stop wasting tax dollars on proprietary software just for the sake of "compatibility"
• No single entitiy will be able to lock people in to things like DRM
• file formats are more likely to be open, so software can compete on its own merits
• more proprietary software (such as games) will be made available for *nix

The bottom line is this: I don't use Microsoft software because it's against my own best interest. I don't want anyone else to use Microsoft software because that, too, is against my own best interest!

I suppose if Microsoft were cut down to the point that they had to be compatible with us, rather than the other way around, that would be OK too. But that would never happen if "embrace and extend" is allowed to continue.

Mu

[temojen]

You are assuming that market value is the only measure of worth. Even in capitalist accounting (GAAP) you are mistaken.

To an accountant, all assets are valued at their expense, minus any prior amortization or markdowns. Most Linux users would thus have to include in their valuation any time they spent downloading, configuring, and installing the kernel.

I would have to include a few hundred dollars for the time to develop, test, and submit the (very small) patch I submitted. With ten years of their life put into it, Linus Torvalds, Alan Cox, etc would each have to value it at several million dollars.

I wonder...

[Algan]

This article raises some interesting questions. Let's consider the following scenario: Assume that Corporation X would like to develop a closed-source product based on the Linux kernel. They offer to pay a certain amount of money for a commercially licensed kernel. To avoid arguments about who gets the money and in what amount, the money will be paid to a commonly agreed charity. Let's also assume, for the sake of the discussion, that it is feasible to contact all kernel contributors and get their agreement to this. My questions are:

- Would you agree to such an arrangement?

- How much do you think it should cost? What would be the pricing structure? (one time payment, royalties based on time/number of units sold etc)

- Do you think the price should vary based on who's buying? Should Microsoft pay more than, say, IBM?

GPL vs BSD

[ryanw]

I personally believe the last string holding Linux back is the GPL. If there was ONE linux fork that could be under the BSD tree and one under the GPL tree, how does that hurt anything? The GPL believe that the GPL is the best thing in the world and that's the best way to develop software. So why don't the GPL followers just continue development with the GPL and then the BSD believers could develop on the BSD tree. And we'll get to see which becomes the BEST linux in the end.

It would be an excellent way to actually test the beliefs of the GPL vs BSD. Uptill now it's just speculation and feelings as to what would happen.

Re:GPL vs BSD

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh...there are already kernels developed under the BSD license. A lot of them. Most of which have been in development longer than linux.

Your "experiment" has already been done: linux IS the GPL case, and the various BSDs are the BSD case. If linux has been wildly more succesful than the BSD variants...

well...what does that tell you?

Re:GPL vs BSD

[ceswiedler]

We have BSD-licensed Unix variants, and we have a GPL-licensed one. How is this different from what you're proposing?

The problem is that the people who have contributed to Linux have specified the GPL. They do this, because in return they get anyone else's improvements to their code, and they also benefit from the entire GPL community. It isn't altruism.

It's interesting to note that Linux picked up a large set of talented developers very quickly. When Linux was starting up, BSD was mired in some legal battles, which certainly hampered it. But since then, developers have worked on GPL projects like Linux more than on BSD-licensed projects. There are many possible explanations for this, but it's a strong indicator that the GPL is more attractive to developers.

Re:GPL vs BSD

[Daytona955i]

Well considering many of the developers would not work under a BSD license I say your argument is flawed. There is a BSD licensed UNIX that runs on x86. I think not as many developers work on it because what incentive does a large comany have to return it's modifications back into the free version as opposed to just saying FU, I have my fork.

Granted it does happen (as in the case of apple) but it is kindof enforced under the GPL and I think that gives the developers some solice that they wouldn't have under a BSD style license.

How would you feel if someone took your work, made a change or two and sold it as their own? I'd be pretty pissed.

Re:GPL vs BSD

[slcdb]

Take a few minutes of your time to read about the history of GNU. Once you understand what the founding principle of the GNU project was (and still is), you'll see why having Linux licensed BSD-style is absolutely out of the question. GNU's and the GPL's sole purpose for existence is to counter proprietary software, and the barriers which proprietary software create.

Granted, Linux isn't actually part of the GNU project, but Linus, I think, chose to license the Linux kernel under the GPL because he believed in GNU's basic founding principles.

To expect Linus and the other contributors to suddenly do a complete 180 and allow Linux to become a proprietary product is absurd.

Re:GPL vs BSD

[merdark]

How would you feel if someone took your work, made a change or two and sold it as their own? I'd be pretty pissed.

I'd find it slightly funny, and slightly flattering. I suppose I am simply an altruist, where as most people are decidedly not.

Re:GPL vs BSD

[slcdb]

So why don't the GPL followers just continue development with the GPL and then the BSD believers could develop on the BSD tree. And we'll get to see which becomes the BEST linux in the end.

Because from the viewpoint of the GPL, any proprietary Linux would automatically be disqualified from being the "BEST" Linux since it would be lacking a crucial component: freedom.

The GNU project (and by extension the GPL) was not started to create the most technologically advanced operating system, it was started to create the most free operating system. Under that criterion, proprietary software automatically sucks ass!

Re:GPL vs BSD

[argent]

First, I'm sure we agree on one point: people who submitted code to Linux because it was GPL-ed must have their intentions respected, so the whole question of relicensing Linux is academic. But I don't think that GPL vs BSD is enough to make an enormous difference... there's all kinds of other reasons that people have gone with Linux, starting with the fact that Linus is a hell of a nice guy (when he's not flaming about microkernels) and that rare bird: someone who's as good with people as he is with code. Without his leadership and example as much as his coding skills it wouldn't have taken off anywhere near as well as it did.

what incentive does a large comany have to return it's modifications back into the free version as opposed to just saying FU, I have my fork.

Well, there's the value of the open-source development model itself. Do you trust the open model, or do you believe that a closed source version would end up out-competing you? If you trust the process, there's no reason not to take that last step into the void.

Look, I've been writing code and giving it away for decades. There was a game I wrote, and a few utilities, in some of the 4.1BSD tapes. Stuff I wrote back in the '80s is floating around all over the place, including most Linux distros.

For a while I released stuff as shareware, or under 'non-commercial' licenses, but by the end of the '80s I was back out of that dubious shelter and enjoying the rain.

Given the amount of stuff Microsoft picked up from BSD, I wouldn't be shocked to find some of it in NT. There probably isn't... I'm a small fish in that pond... but it's not out of the question. Some other utilities and libraries I've written have gone into commercial products, and I know there's code of mine in the Panther source tree.

How would you feel if someone took your work, made a change or two and sold it as their own?

I feel pretty good about it, actually.

Re:GPL vs BSD

[Anonymous Coward]

I personally believe the last string holding Linux back is the GPL

Really? So what's holding back Free/Net/Open/Dragonfly/whateverBSD?

One could argue that the GPL is what's moving Linux forward.

Re:GPL vs BSD

[mcrbids]

They do this, because in return they get anyone else's improvements to their code, and they also benefit from the entire GPL community. It isn't altruism.

Absolutely. As a PHP developer, I've released numerous classes and code samples to the community, simply because

1) The code didn't offer any compelling feature that gave an advantage over potential competitors, and

2) I get improvements for free.

This combination allows me to focus on the parts that matter, rather than the "infrastructure" stuff.

Re:GPL vs BSD

[Quill_28]

Nothing.Or do you always take one case and then make huge sweeping generalizations? Or maybe you are just an idiot.

Think apache.

Re:GPL vs BSD

[ryanw]

Your "experiment" has already been done: linux IS the GPL case, and the various BSDs are the BSD case. If linux has been wildly more succesful than the BSD variants...

well...what does that tell you?

Well, If you want to use the previous existing kernels as the "test case" then lets see what has happened then.

In the BSD corner we have MacOSX

In the Linux Corner we have variants of RedHat, Debian, SuSE, and a few others.

I don't want to turn this into a MacOSX vs Linux discussion, but the main reason I use MacOSX over Linux is because MacOSX has several major commercial companies developing software for MacOSX and management of the OS and libraries is completely simple and flawless.

Linux on the other hand has very, very, very little commercial support (yes there's Maya and a handfull of others) and is a nightmare to maintain. Updates are extreamly frequent, and if you lag behind you're going to be stuck with a serious security issue on your hand.

So to sum up, BSD looks like it's the better model. I would like to see a company do an overhaul to Linux like Apple did with BSD.

Re:GPL vs BSD

[Anonymous Coward]

I personally believe the last string holding Linux back is the GPL.

If you truly believe that, then grab one of the BSD's (they are under a BSD license by definition after all), organize about 50,000 developers worldwide to develop software and kick the crap out of Linux!

What's that you say? You can't get 50,000 developers that want to contribute their work under a BSD license?

You see, I think your basic flawed assumption is that people that contribute under a GPL license are giving their code away. They are not! They are exposing their work for others to use in exchange for access to any improvements that are made on it.

Re:GPL vs BSD

[ergo98]

Well considering many of the developers would not work under a BSD license

Funny that a large portion of the most important software running the internet, and used as the foundation even for much of the GPL software, was developed under the BSD license (and of course we know that a large percentage of GPL software was built by studying commercial or BSD software and then making a clone and then turning around and making purile claims of intellectual purity). Of course you just have to look at all of those crazy Apache forks out there...

I think not as many developers work on it because what incentive does a large comany have to return it's modifications back into the free version as opposed to just saying FU, I have my fork.

Most large companies that are contributing to Linux are doing so in a way that turns the momentum towards their own strategic best interest. They want you to integrate their changes because their changes serve them best.

How would you feel if someone took your work, made a change or two and sold it as their own? I'd be pretty pissed.

Why? In no way is "your work" any less available, and at most the value of what they are selling is the value added by the features that they've added (if I take libgzip and add a new flag for rot13 all of the contents, clearly the only value I am setting is the rot13 because people can still get libgzip as free as it's ever been). What you're describing is petty envy - If I can't make a penny off this then neither can you. That pretty much sums up much of the GPL sentiment as expressed by the angry hoardes (it isn't the true spirit of the GPL, but it's the message that the haters get).

Re:GPL vs BSD

[Anonymous Coward]

> I think not as many developers work on it because what incentive does a large comany have to return it's modifications back into the free version as opposed to just saying FU, I have my fork.
> Granted it does happen (as in the case of apple) but it is kindof enforced under the GPL and I think that gives the developers some solice that they wouldn't have under a BSD style license.
> How would you feel if someone took your work, made a change or two and sold it as their own? I'd be pretty pissed.

Would you please stop spreading this shit? Every time there's a GPL vs BSD flame war, I see this all the time. A GPL zealot usually claims BSD allows some proprietary company to take BSD code and change it to sell as their own without providing any credit. If this happened, it's plagiarism and it's illegal.

Moreover, the GPL doesn't stop anyone from forking a GPL project and keeping it closed. In essence, under the GPL "a large company [doesn't] have to return it's modifications back into the free version [and] just saying FU, I have my fork." Go ask the MPAA/Hollywood about their code contributions to Linux.

Read over your beloved GPL again, and stop spreading shit about BSD. If you don't understand the succinct and lucid BSD, I doubt you'll understand the legalese of GPL.

Re:GPL vs BSD

[808140]

While you're right in correcting this common misconception about the GPL, it is worth noting that any copyright license that attempts to govern usage has stepped outside its legal jurisdiction, as it were.

Copyright law governs one thing only: the right to copy. Hence the name. In the same way that I can buy Jerry Falwell's new book and rub it between my butt cheeks after everytime I finish having gay sex, I can do whatever I want with code that I have a license to have.

Jerry Falwell, while disagreeing with my love of buttsex, would be helpless in court to stop me from using his book in this unintended manner. However, if I started to reprint books of his, without his prior permission, in order to spread the joy of buttcumming on his literary works, he would be able to point copyright law in my direction and bitchslap me in court.

Similarly, if an evil large corporation decides to use Linux to, I dunno, kill furry bunnies or build nuclear weapons, there's nothing the GPL can do about it. And any added provision in a license attempting to restrict this sort of use would have no effect.

All that one could do is restrict people from distributing the code to certain people (so you can use copyright to blacklist, or whitelist, if you will) because that's restriction of the right to copy.

Everything else is just confused FUD.

Re:GPL vs BSD

[argent]

Linus, I think, chose to license the Linux kernel under the GPL because he believed in GNU's basic founding principles

Linus has written that if the BSD effort had been ready a year sooner he probably wouldn't have developed Linux. Not that he regrets doing so, of course!

I suspect he chose the GPL because he needed something and it was already worked out and he was smart enough to realise that a working license in the hand beats wasting time trying to be a lawyer. A lot of people I've talked to chose the GPL for that reason, actually.

There's certainly people for whom the GPL is key, and wouldn't "do a complete 180", so the issue is still academic. But the GPL wasn't quite the slam-dunk you're making it.

Re:GPL vs BSD

[slcdb]

Linus has written that if the BSD effort had been ready a year sooner he probably wouldn't have developed Linux.

Sure he wouldn't have started Linux if BSD had been released a year earlier. Why bother creating a Unix-clone when someone else has already done it, and you can freely obtain the source code? But that doesn't mean that he didn't believe in Free Software.

I suspect he chose the GPL because he needed something and it was already worked out and he was smart enough to realise that a working license in the hand beats wasting time trying to be a lawyer.

Actually, at first he didn't release it under the GPL. It wasn't until later that he switched his license to the less restrictive GPL. So, he was doing the lawyer thing himself for a while.

Linus once said, "My reasons for putting Linux out there were pretty selfish. I didn't want the headache of trying to deal with parts of the operating system that I saw as the crap work. I wanted help." The only way he could ensure that he would get the help he was looking for, was to require that contributions made by others had to be free for him to use. The GPL exactly matched those requirements. It's pretty clear that it wasn't just any old license that happened to be ready when he needed one.

Re:GPL vs BSD

[argent]

Why bother creating a Unix-clone when someone else has already done it, and you can freely obtain the source code? But that doesn't mean that he didn't believe in Free Software.

Buddy, I'm one of the guys who was working on Net/2 and 386BSD at the time, and I still use the BSD license by choice, and I sure as hell believe in Free Software. I believed in Free Software before Stallman wrote the GNU Manifesto. I believed in Free Software back when the only free C compiler was a subset and the Beagle Brothers were the voice of reason in the hobbyist world. I believed in Free Software when Microsoft was a bunch of overcapitalised geeks (would that they'd stayed that small).

You don't have to believe in GNU's founding principles to believe in Free Software (or Open Source Software, or Open Systems, or however you want to approach a software environment where you don't have to pay for the equivalent of the very air you breathe). You don't have to believe in GNU's founding principles to find the GPL useful. If you stop and think about it you'll see that nothing in your quotes and commentary contradicts that.

Re:GPL vs BSD

[slcdb]

Buddy, I'm one of the guys who was working on Net/2 and 386BSD at the time, and I still use the BSD license by choice, and I sure as hell believe in Free Software. I believed in Free Software before Stallman wrote the GNU Manifesto. I believed in Free Software back when the only free C compiler was a subset and the Beagle Brothers were the voice of reason in the hobbyist world. I believed in Free Software when Microsoft was a bunch of overcapitalised geeks (would that they'd stayed that small).

There's a lot of, "I" this, and "I" that in your response. This was never a discussion about you. This was a discussion about Linus' motivation for licensing Linux under the GPL. You have you're motivations for choosing to use the BSD license and Linus has his own reasons for choosing to use the GPL. Not that I'm saying I know what Linus' motivations were. I merely offered my opinion based on reasoned observation.

You don't have to believe in GNU's founding principles to believe in Free Software...

Actually you do considering that they are one and the same. Notice that I never said I thought Linus believed in GNU. I said I thought he believed GNU's founding principle. GNU's founding principle is the notion of Free Software. If I'm wrong about this, then please tell me what GNU's founding principle actually is.

You don't have to believe in GNU's founding principles to find the GPL useful. If you stop and think about it you'll see that nothing in your quotes and commentary contradicts that.

You're completely right. I could find the GPL useful for a lot of things: a coaster, toilet paper, or, with lots of lunchmeat, maybe even a good sandwich. None of those uses would signify a belief in Free Software. But if I choose to put the GPL to use as a software license, there's a pretty darn good indication that I made that choice because I believe in Free Software.

Re:GPL vs BSD

[argent]

This was a discussion about Linus' motivation for licensing Linux under the GPL.

That's right. I was responding to the claim that Linux use of the GPL implied that he believed GNU's founding principle. It doesn't.

GNU's founding principle is the notion of Free Software

GNU's founding principle is opposition to the incorporation of free software in proprietary systems. In particular, it started with Stallman's reaction to the conversion or forking of Emacs as a commercial product. There are many other reasons to believe in Free Software that have nothing to do with ones attitude towards proprietary software. One can even believe in Free Software and not mind seeing it incorporated in closed source software.

Seriously. I know this for a fact. Through personal experience.

if I choose to put the GPL to use as a software license, there's a pretty darn good indication that I made that choice because I believe in Free Software

If I choose to use the BSD license rather than the GPL does that imply then that I don't believe in Free Software? If I choose to use the GPL and say that I did it for utterly practical reasons unrelated to my beliefs, what does that say about my beliefs?

Remember what the topic is. If the topic is GPL versus BSD, and you say that Linus used the GPL because he believed in "Free Software", then are you saying that the BSD license implies a lack of belief in "Free Software"?

If you do, well, go back and read that "I" this and "I" that stuff, because that's where it comes from, and if you still can't see why I think it's relevant and why I think you're wrong, well, it won't help to repeat it.

If you don't, then what was the point you were trying to make? Because I'm damned if I can see what it has to do with the subject.

Re:GPL vs BSD

[slcdb]

That's right. I was responding to the claim that Linux use of the GPL implied that he believed GNU's founding principle. It doesn't.

It doesn't? I'm baffled at how you've come to that conclusion. I think there is a strong implication. No, it isn't proof, but the implication is definitely there. His mere use of GNU's license alone demonstrates at least a minimal level of belief in the principles at the heart of said license. Any reasonable person can see that.

GNU's founding principle is opposition to the incorporation of free software in proprietary systems.

You can spin it that way, and it almost sounds true. Though GNU has had to fight against the incorporation of Free Software in proprietary systems in order to advance the cause, it's not the founding principle. The founding principle is the Free Software itself. The other stuff just helps keep the Free Software free, unlike the BSD license where proprietary versions of Free Software are no longer free.

If the topic is GPL versus BSD, and you say that Linus used the GPL because he believed in "Free Software", then are you saying that the BSD license implies a lack of belief in "Free Software"?
...
If you [aren't saying that], then what was the point you were trying to make? Because I'm damned if I can see what it has to do with the subject.

First of all, the topic is not GPL vs. BSD. This was never intended to be a discussion of the merits of the two licenses. That may be the title of the thread, but the topic is, " If there was ONE linux fork that could be under the BSD tree and one under the GPL tree, how does that hurt anything?" See the original post.

Second, no I'm not saying that about the BSD license. The BSD license supports a type of Free Software as well. However, given that Linus chose the GPL there's an implication that he believes in the GNU form of Free Software (i.e. software that stays completely free). I've also provided other pieces of evidence that further support this position, and create an even stronger implication: Linux was initially licensed even more restrictively than the GPL (i.e. "nobody can make money off of this software"); Linus said that he wanted help building Linux (i.e. he needed people to give back their modifications). I've supported my argument with evidence, not just personal anecdote. The only "evidence" I hear from you is that, "I'm okay with using the BSD license, and having my Free Software converted into proprietary software, so Linus must be okay with that idea too." Look, I share some of your views with regard to Free Software. I'm okay with the software that I write being included in proprietary systems; partly because I've taken BSD licensed software and incorporated it into my own proprietary systems and profited as a result. But, this by no means that Linus shares my view. In fact, the evidence seems to indicate quite the opposite.

Third, and finally, my argument directly addressed the original question, and is thus directly related to the subject. The question was asked, "How does converting Linux's license to a BSD license hurt anything?" My argument has been this: It could do so by potentially defeating the original intent of the creator of Linux, by not keeping the Free Software that he created free, but by allowing others to modify his work, profit from it, and never give anything back. I'm sorry if my argument wasn't clear enough, or wasn't detailed enough, or didn't contain sufficient evidence for you to follow.

Re:GPL vs BSD

[argent]

Subject: Re:GPL vs BSD
Comment:

It doesn't? I'm baffled at how you've come to that conclusion. I think there is a strong implication.

I don't, because I've talked to too many people who use the GPL simply because they see it as the default license for free software. I don't, because I've talked to people who don't care and it's "good enough". Because I've talked to people who decided it solves some problem they need solving. People who saw someone else use it. People who thought they had to. I've had people who used the GPL and when I asked them for a copy of the source they said "Oh, I didn't know it meant that! Thanks, I'll fix that right now."

There are all kinds of reasons that have nothing to do with the GNU manifesto.

You can't tell anything about what someone's beliefs are based on the use of the GPL. You can only tell what their beliefs are by reading what they write about their beliefs.

Linux wrote about why he used the GPL. You quoted it, and what you quoted doesn't say "I beleieve in the principles of the FSF", it says "The GPL solved a problem that I needed solving". Back then the GPL was the only widely used license that solved that problem. There's lots more, now.

Though GNU has had to fight against the incorporation of Free Software in proprietary systems in order to advance the cause, it's not the founding principle.

It absolutely is. Not only was the GNU Manifesto created as a direct result of exactly that, but the only difference between the GPL and other licenses, is that it doesn't allow proprietary forks. If not for that, there would be no reason for the GPL to exist, and there would have been no motivation for creating it.

Stallman borrowed copiously from Gosling's innovations. Although Gosling had put GOSMACS under copyright and had sold the rights to UniPress, a privately held software company, Stallman cited the assurances of a fellow developer who had participated in the early MOCKLISP interpreter. According to the developer, Gosling, while a Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon, had assured early collaborators that their work would remain accessible. When UniPress caught wind of Stallman's project, however, the company threatened to enforce the copyright. Once again, Stallman faced the prospect of building from the ground up. -- "A Stark Moral Choice"

Finally:
The only "evidence" I hear from you is that, "I'm okay with using the BSD license, and having my Free Software converted into proprietary software, so Linus must be okay with that idea too."

I never said any such thing. You made a claim about Linus' motives. The points made in support of your claim included an assertion that believing in Free Software was equivalent to believing in the GNU form of Free Software. The only reason for that anecdote is to demonstrate that this specific point is not true. THAT IS ALL.

Anything else you want to infer from that, including such absurd comments at the one quoted above, is something happening in your head. I didn't say any such thing.

Re:GPL vs BSD

[slcdb]

I don't, because I've talked to too many people who use the GPL simply because they see it as the default license for free software... [ad nauseum]

There's no point in arguing with someone who's going to throw all analytical reasoning out the window because of personal anecdote that doesn't even apply to the subject at hand. You just don't get it. You can keep bringing up examples like this all day long. They have nothing to do with Linus' own views.

Re:GPL vs BSD

[argent]

You just don't get it. You can keep bringing up examples like this all day long. They have nothing to do with Linus' own views

You're right, I don't get it. You made a positive claim about Linus' own views, based on the fact that he used the GPL.

I objected to that generalization.

I haven't said that the claim was wrong, because I don't know how strongly he believes in the GNU project. But I do object to the argument that using the GPL carries the kind of implication about ones beliefs that you keep asserting.

Let me repeat that.

I do not think I have made a single statement that says Linus agrees or disagrees with the GNU project, all I've said is that the evidence I have seen wasn't (and still isn't) strong enough to make any such claim. I presented a quote, you presented a quote. I said your quote was subject to interpretation. you said my quote is subject to interpretation.

Well, yeh, both of them are pretty wide open.

But, and this is important, that's a side issue. It's not what I objected to. And I'm not going to try and defend a claim I haven't made and don't believe not matter how much you want me to.

What I am arguing is merely that using the GPL doesn't necessarily imply agreement with the "founding principles of GNU". that is: one can use the GPL on ones software for reasons that have nothing to do with the reasons in the GNU manifesto or other documents.

I'm sorry that you took that badly, and made the broader claim that ones support of free software is somehow tied in to the GPL and the GNU project. I don't understand that point of view, and I don't appreciate the implication that the BSD license is somehow less free and inferior.

I think I've made *that* point good and hard, and if you don't understand it, I'm not going to get anywhere making it again. Either you accept that the GPL is not the only way to keep free software free, or you don't.

I'm quite happy to defend my interpretation of the GNU Manifesto and the GPL, based on my experience in watching the events unfold. I've provided a link to a document at the GNU site that provides a bit of that background.

But I'm not going to get caught up in an argument about what Linus' beliefs may be. I'm not taking up that gauntlet. Sorry.

BSD licensed Linux Kernel?

[nurb432]

But if that was done, it wouldn't be linux anymore..

It would be a total rewrite.. and be something else..

Cost vs Value

[clenhart]

David Wheeler's answer is based on how much it *costs* to make. This is different from how valuable the kernel is to a buyer.

For example, Windows is *worth* more than it costs to produce (based on profit margins), meaning people are willing to pay more than it takes to make it, which is another way of saying that Windows is worth more to consumers than it costs to make.

Now, windows is a monopoly so the price tends to go towards the worth of the product, not the cost. Linux is highly competitive (with many distributions), and the price tends towards the cost of the product. Therefore, it is very difficult to calculate the value of the kernel since the Linux market is based on the costs, not value.

Re:Cost vs Value

[Pop69]

"Now, windows is a monopoly so the price tends to go towards the worth of the product, not the cost."

You misunderstand a monopoly. Microsoft can charge more than the software is worth because there is a lack of competition to force the price down to at or near its cost.

I'm not getting it

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I losing it or have I just been smoking too much weed. Last I checked, the Linux kernel was free.

Linux already has an established name...

[Anonymous Coward]

And FreeBSD does not, because it's dead.

Markey just wants to get his grubby hands upon all the free publicity that Linux has already built up.

GMail Invites.

[Anonymous Coward]

TheKing@graceland.com

I'm not really dead, I swear it.

--Elvis

Misconceptions

[Savant]

There seem to be a remarkably large number of people posting on this one who haven't read past the title, never mind the article.

This isn't about a consumer price for a kernel binary. Comparisons with copies of Windows are irrelevant. The $612 million dollars quoted is a suggested figure representing the kind of cost a commercial company would have to take on to develop an identical operating system kernel.

Software companies have in the past changed hands for large sums of money. The brand is of course worth some of that money, as are relationships with existing customers, but a large part of that value is the IP possessed by the company. There are few companies that have possessed software assets of a complexity and widespread use comparable to the Linux kernel that have changed hands, and such companies when sold have been bought for large sums - to pick one example, Netscape was bought by AOL at a price tag of $4.2 billion dollars.

The value of the Linux kernel code and Linux branding, if a company with sufficient resources were interested in obtaining it, and if it were for sale, would quite probably exceed this figure of $612 million by a sizeable percentage.

$50K is a derisory offer for even an non-exclusive right to develop and redistribute the IP, which is effectively what a solitary copy under the BSD licence would give. Certainly the company I work for would laugh helplessly if such an offer was made for our code, which is several orders of magnitude smaller and less complex than the kernel.

Savant

Re:Misconceptions

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, they say they're serious, but it was obviously really just intended to spark debate. If they want a BSD licensed POSIX OS, just use a *BSD.

Re:Misconceptions

[flaming-opus]

True, this isn't a comparison to a single license of windows. However it would be interesting to see what other similar deals have cost.

Windows NT is (arguably) a derivative of DEC's VMS operating system. Back in the early 90's microsoft settled a case with digital for copyright problems. (Anyone know the value?)

When cray research developed the cs6400 server, they licensed solaris from sun. I wonder what they paid or that.

Microsoft's SQL server is a derivative of sybase. Anyone know what they paid for those rights?

I don't have any numbers here, but they are all 10's or 100's of millions of dollars. $50k is ridiculous for a linux license.

Afraid of a little competition?

[Anonymous Coward]

From the article:

"But with a BSD-style release, someone else could take the code and establish a competing proprietary product, and it would take time for the kernel developers to add enough additional material to compete with such a product."

So, assuming that SCO is behind this offer, and we all know that Microsoft and SCO are in bed together, and one of the main reasons behind pushing Linux into the mainstream is because of the distaste for Microsoft, is Linux AFRAID of some competition from Microsoft?????

Re:Afraid of a little competition?

[Anonymous Coward]

More threatening scenarios have been mentioned on the mailing list than simple competition with a BSD or closed source Linux tree. Besides, $50k is ridiculous. I estimate $50k to be the value of the drugs that you have to be high on to think that such an offer is reasonable.

Very little

[adiposity]

Considering the several free kernels (OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD to give a few) of comparable (or superior, some would say) design, performance, and extensibility, which can be used in any commercial product you like, I'd say the market is very weak. When comparable products sell for $0, your product isn't worth (read: market value) much more than that. -Dan

Re:Very little

[Zebbers]

Wow...so windows must be free then, huh?

Merkey works for SCO

[schon]

Well, actually Canopy (his name is listed on a patent obtained by Canopy), but close enough.

Gentlemen, at this time, I ask that you don your tinfoil hats.

with BSD you don't

Exactly. Now, suppose you want to sell licenses to people for using your IP in Linux, but people tell you "hey, that's under GPL - you distributed it, so you can't charge a license fee."

Merkey's company wants to sell modified Linux without providing source code to the modifications.

Yes, yes it does. Think about that - think about the lawsuit - perhaps they were thinking that they could snow the kernel devs into selling them a "get out of jail free" (perhaps even in a literal sense) card for $50.000.

Re:Merkey works for SCO

[Anonymous Coward]

He is also posting to the mailing list from the drdos.com domain.

whositwhatnow?

[justforaday]

What's it worth? Hmmm, I'll throw out the first number that pops into my head...How does 503 sound?

Jeff Merkey - Canopy Group - SCO

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a bit about Jeff Merkey on Groklaw recently. Seems that he's associated with the Canopy Group, SCO's parent company. It should be extremely obvious why *they* would want a non-GPL fork of Linux. There's also been a lot of discussion about him on the Yahoo SCO board, and you can find a lot of those comments here.

Wheeler's estimates may be inflated

[Anonymous Coward]

Starting with the source code of a dozen or so software projects in our company, I applied Wheeler's method to estimate the programmer-months and cost of each. My project sample was broad, including larger desktop applications (500k lines) and smaller embedded software. The estimates tended always to exceed the actual effort. The difference was not an order of magnitude but perhaps as much as 2x.

Why the disparity? It all goes back to the constants you use to calibrate the COCOMO model. I used his constants, which he chose somewhat arbitrarily but reasonably. The point being, the model used is uncalibrated, and at any rate such models may be entirely bogus.

Of course, there is now COCOMO II, which is a more complicated way of creating bogus estimates.

Re:Wheeler's estimates may be inflated

[Hank Reardon]

I noticed some funkiness with SLOCCount recently, as well.

I was asked by the CEO of the company to estimate the worth of my recent efforts (6 weeks of 100+ hours) had we sourced the application to somebody like IBM or CA or some other "Solutions Provider".

The numbers for the 6 weeks wort of work came out at 3.75 man years, 4 person team, development costs of something like $1.5 million. In my experience, the larger the team, the more accurate SLOCCount becomes.

Of course, since the estimates were way over the top, I decided to forward them on, explaining that I used some NASA/IBM methodlogy to arrive at the numbers, and I needed a raise. :)

Re:Wheeler's estimates may be inflated

[Anonymous Coward]

You picked the wrong setting for "code quality".

What is mathematics worth?

[amightywind]

What is mathematics worth? Shouldn't we pay Pythagoras' decendants a royalty each time we use his triangle theorem? How about the theory of electromagnetism? Shouldn't we kick in a few cents to Maxwell's decendents each time we use an electrical device? The works of Shakespeare? Free software, like the Linux kernel belong to a body of knowledge that is not really saleable but are beyond value. Our society may be highly influenced by capitalist ideas, but they are not universal.

Re:What is mathematics worth?

[Brandybuck]

Your argument misses the point. I don't have to pay anyone to use the pythagorean theorem in my proprietary product. I don't need to follow a license. I don't need to get permission from his descendents. If someone asked for the original theorem I could tell them to take a hike. I could even take a copy of the theorem, encrypt it and encase it in a vault, and no one would care. IT IS TRULY FREE!

But do the same thing with GPL software and people go nuts. Fifty million copies of Linux, but put just one instance under a non-GPL license and people go apeshit. It's clear that Linux does not really belong to the same class of information as the pythagorean theorem.

In fact, now that I think about it, what people are "protecting" with the GPL is not the software itself, since the software is merely information and needs no protection. Instead what is being protected is a "taboo". Like a copy of the pythagorean theorem locked in a vault, one single proprietary instance of Linux out of millions of GPL licensed copies and thousands of repositories is *NOT* going to damage Linux. But one such proprietary instance will violate the TABOO. And that means the tribe will have to put on feathers and paint and go to war...

Look at supply and demand

[daveo0331]

The market value of the Linux kernel, like anything else, is determined by supply and demand. Because of the way it's licensed and the fact that no one company controls the distribution, the supply is basically infinite and so the fair market value is zero.

It's a lot like air, which also has a market value of zero. There's plenty of it to go around even though it's free. Therefore it has no economic value.

Of course, another similarity between Linux and air is that it's really valuable to those who use it. But since there's enough of both to go around for free, no one can make money charging for either one.

Heyyyyy, wait. a. minute....

[Thud457]

"Markey just wants to get his grubby hands upon all the free publicity that Linux has already built up."

Are you implying that "Linux" is an actual marketable brand?!!!
All the /. trolls keep telling me that only basement-dwelling loser troglodites use Linux!

Re:Heyyyyy, wait. a. minute....

[Kadmium]

Yes, it's a marketable brand of laundry detergent. http://slashdot.org/articles/99/12/16/1248216.shtm l/

See if you can get a firm quote from Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

on a BSD copy of win xp professional.

Let us know what they are willing to sell one for. Oh, and for the people who are saying that the kernel is worth nothing because there is not market under the offer, I guess win xp also has no value under the same offer.

A Nony Mouse

Contributors only have a say if they retain (c)

[AHumbleOpinion]

Only by agreeing with everyone who contributed with code to the kernel they could change the license

That is only true if the contributor retains the copyright for his/her fragment of the code. If it is all Linus' copyright then the contributors would have no say. Much as contributors have no say when they transfer their code to the FSF.

10 Billion ++

[HexaByte]

According to an IBM rep who spoke to our LUG 2 years ago, IBM promised to invest 1 Billion in Linux because they had estimated it would take them $10 Billion to get it to where it was then. That was in the 2.4 stage. Now, with the 2.6 kernel, it should be worth another Billion or so. Of course, I'm willing to sell copies of the latest kernel to all comers for only $500. That includes a year of my "Platinum Support".

I think your math is slightly off

[Anonymous Coward]

According to SCO, it should be $699 per machine.

Re:Price of a shrink-wrapped Mandrake distro: $39.

[HexaByte]

You're paying WAY too much for your blank CDs!

HexaByte

interesting responses

[N3Z]

in the newsgroup thread: http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1 &safe=off&frame=right&th=1606e9c6afe19691&seekm=2M MU9-71k-11%40gated-at.bofh.it#s

You confuse investment with worth

[AHumbleOpinion]

Someone wrote the kernel ist estimated about USD 1 billion

You confuse investment with worth. Companies fail to recover their investment costs every day because the market says their product/service is not worth that much. Would you value MS Windows at how much MS has spent on it?

Re:You confuse investment with worth

[808140]

Judging by how tremendously profitable MS has been as a result of their OS monopoly, I would say, from a business perspective, it sure as shit looks like it.

Re:You confuse investment with worth

[AHumbleOpinion]

I think that you are missing the detail that after buying MS Windows you do not have exclusive rights to it and MS is your competitor. If someone buys the Linux kernel the GPL'd source from the day before is still available, none of the distributions in the field are affected.

nothing

[chegosaurus]

I'd kind of say it's commercial value is zero, because if it had cost more than that no one would ever have picked up on it. It pitched in at exactly the price the market would support: nothing. That probably doesn't make any sense. my brain is all used up for today.

Windows kernel

[RosCabezas]

So, MSWindows code market value is zero, too, since you're not going to be able to buy it.

Is this missing the point?

[Al Dimond]

Perhaps one can measure the worth of the Linux kernel in its current state, but it would never have been worth anything without being both free and Free.

Suits and PHBs have heard about Linux

[AHumbleOpinion]

Uh...there are already kernels developed under the BSD license. A lot of them. Most of which have been in development longer than linux.

Yes, and the older uber-geeks often prefer the BSDs. However there is much more hype about Linux and the suits and PHBs have heard about Linux. In short, Linux may be an easier sell for some application for political reasons, not technical reasons. Welcome to the real world.

depends solely on one thing

[dilvish_the_damned]

How much are you willing to pay me for it? Though you can get a much better deal if you buy the GPLed version, we have many in stock.
All of the other versions are probably out of your price range.

Your comment makes no sense

[adiposity]

First of all, the price of Windows OS has little to do with the cost of licensing a kernel of a Unix OS.

1. Windows OS is much more than a kernel. It is a set of APIs, applications developed using those APIs, and a microkernel, among other things. It also has a huge host of drivers designed to work with that kernel, many of which were designed by Microsoft themselves.

2. The cost of licensing a kernel does not determine the price of the operating system that is based on it, although it is certainly a factor.

3. The price of Windows is based on what the market will pay, which is determined in large part by the fact that Microsoft is a monopoly, and people are forced to buy their product. Additionally, the large majority of software works only on Windows. This artificially raises the price of the OS, meaning that other OSes might be priced similarly if the software support were there.

BSD based kernels allow one to do most of the same things that the Linux kernel does. The Windows kernel's design dictates that similar software will not easily be ported from *nix, a problem the BSD kernels do not have. There are GNU distros being developed on BSD kernels:

Debian FreeBSD
NetBSD

Based on this, and based on the fact that almost all opensource software that runs on Linux runs on FreeBSD, I'd say the market values of the kernels are pretty damn comparable. Your Windows example, however, isn't.

-Dan

Software in not art!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do people keep refering to software as art?
Software is a science, you should look at it as science.

Sure software, as art, can be elegant but there is a difference. Art tries to please, shock or bore you. it just depends on how you interpreter it. Software, when interpreted should just work...

N.B. Linux (not linus) is replaceable La Musique is not.

Wouter

Re:Software in not art!

[Anonymous Coward]

A functional requirement has never stopped anyone from creating a piece of art out of something. Just look at timepieces.

The brand worth more

[S3D]

David Wheeler estimated only development cost. But for end-user products the brand itself usually worth more than development cost. How much Linux brand worth ? If we suppose that Linux account for 5% desktop (not sure how to add desktops, servers and smartphones) that mean Linux brand worth at least 5% of windows. So I'd say Linux brand is worth several billions (below 10 billions).

Refreshing...

[B1gP4P4Smurf]

You can always come to slashdot for a good rehash of the week's stupidest LKML threads.

GNU/Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

How much is it worth if you add the GNU part?

For everything else..

[Anonymous Coward]

Development costs by Microsoft 2,000,000,000
Buying out the compitition 1,000,000,000
In court related costs 500,000,000
Lost revenue from pirates 200,000,000

Having to compete against a free alternative PRICELESS

There are some kernals you just cant buy, for everything else theres Master Card(TM)

Re:For everything else..

[Anonymous Coward]

HA!

What would a "BSD-licensed Linux kernel" be?

[argent]

Let's see, if Linus and Alan and the rest of the big names all got together and put their own code in the pot, and you left out all the GPL-ed contributions from third parties, kind of like a Net-2 release of Linux...

I guess you could put something together that was about like a ten year old Slackware release. It'd take a couple of years to replace the missing bits. I think you'd be better off keeping this in mind: "If 386bsd had been ready one year earlier, I'd probably not have started on linux at all, but used bsd instead - although I'm very happy with how it all turned out." -- Linus Torvalds, December 1992 . There's already a BSD-licensed kernel you can have, gratis, and it works rather nicely indeed.

Who would you buy it from?

[phorm]

With the number of contributors to the linux kernel, including kernel core, patches, modules, etc etc... who would you even buy it from?

I don't think there's any one person/group that can claim full ownership to the current kernel.

A BSD-licensed kernel is quite affordable.

[argent]

The $612 million dollars quoted is a suggested figure representing the kind of cost a commercial company would have to take on to develop an identical operating system kernel.

I'll do it for $50K. It'll be ready as soon as I can do a global search-and-replace on this copy of the FreeBSD source tree. Unless you want the Linux name on it, there's really not much point in licensing the actual kernel, and if you do... well... doesn't matter how much you pay to develop a Linux clone it won't have the name on it.

In other words, this is the crux of the biscuit:

The value of the Linux kernel code and Linux branding, [...] would quite probably exceed this figure of $612 million by a sizeable percentage.

Indeed.

Netscape was bought by AOL at a price tag of $4.2 billion dollars

And they promptly discarded most of the existing code and started over with a new rendering engine: what they ended up buying was the name. Similarly, if someone's looking for a BSD-licensed Linux what they're really looking to get out of it is the name... if they just want a kernel they can get one a lot cheaper.

commercial?

[codergeek42]

Microsoft Windows (XP Pro) : ~$399
A bigger hard drive, faster processor, and more RAM to be able to hold all that bloat: ~$450
Installing GNU/Linux and never again having to worry about virii, adware, and spyware: priceless.

That's a load of crap...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's very easy to put a hard monetary value on a painting. Pay Sotheby's or Christie's to auction it off. At this point, you could probably even use eBay as your venue.

The same could be done for a Linux kernel snapshot. While general consensus hold US$50K as far too little, that does not mean it is priceless.

If the owner/owning entity is unwilling to sell, you can wait for them to die/dissolve and ownership to be transferred to someone/something more willing to sell. There are also ways of speeding up this process if the buyer is willing to spend extra to do so.

Do money guys actually value IP Cos as property?

[swb]

....or do they only value them based upon their cashflows and sales projections?

I'm kind of thinking of the world I work in (advertising), where I've been told that ad companies are usually bought and sold valued on 3-5 year profit projections, and even then there's a lot of negotiating room based upon the stability of key client relationships, client spending plans and patterns, etc.

Advertising is more limited in that the IP is sold once and reused by the client, seemingly forever in some cases, so the only "value" is in the particular collection of employees and the client relationships.

Given how nebulous IP is vs. real estate, machines, mining rights, train tracks and all the other physical property manifestations of a business, it just makes me wonder how often anyone looks at the "inherent" value of the IP vs. just what people might buy the IP for in the future (ie, future sales and cashflow).

Car Talk Link???

[brookswv]

Is this Jeff Merkey possibly a brother to Paul Murky of Merky Research, the assistants to the good folks at Car Talk?

Author responds...

[dwheeler]

I agree with your statement that "there is not enough data to set a reasonable market price for the product", since obviously no sale of different Linux rights has been made.

However, your next statement is somewhat missing the point: "Estimating based on what it would cost in a commercial environment is also flawed, because there are too many variables to consider." Yes, salaries and overheads vary, and they'll certainly affect the answer. But I used a U.S.-nationwide average for salaries, and several sources for the overhead value. See "Gigabuck" for more info. So this is an "average" kind of development. If you don't like those assumptions, I gave enough information for you to recompute everything using different values. But you have to make some assumptions, and I think these are quite reasonable ones; I basically picked averages to represent an "average" development project's costs.

But then you say stuff that I think isn't right: "The bottom line is, since the developers have always been paid nothing for their work (except those that are being sponsored by commercial entities) ... since in all likelihood if these guys weren't writing the code in their spare time, they would be doing some other hobby... The bottom line here is, the only time that you can assign a value to is the time that someone actually received a wage for. This is a small minority of the overall code base, so by that method the code would not be worth much at all."

Two problems: first, I'm computing re-development cost, and presuming that the developers would be getting a wage. And second, most of the changes in the Linux kernel are from developers getting a wage to do so.

In fact, the move to wage-earning OSS/FS development has been one of the silent trends in the IT industry. In 2004, Government Computer News reported in July 2004 on a presentation by Andrew Morton, who leads maintenance of the the Linux kernel in its stable form, and confirmed the trend towards paid OSS/FS developers. Morton spoke at a meeting sponsored by the Forum on Technology and Innovation, to address technology-related issues, held by Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), Sen. Ron Wyden (D- Ore.) and the Council on Competitiveness. Morton noted that "People's stereotype [of the typical Linux developer] is of a male computer geek working in his basement writing code in his spare time, purely for the love of his craft. Such people were a significant force up until about five years ago ..." but contributions from such enthusiasts, "is waning... Instead, most Linux kernel code is now generated by corporate programmers." Morton noted that "About 1,000 developers contribute changes to Linux on a regular basis... Of those 1,000 developers, about 100 are paid to work on Linux by their employers. And those 100 have contributed about 37,000 of the last 38,000 changes made to the operating system."

For more about the general trend of employed OSS/FS developers, see http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html#wont-destr oy-industry. This isn't new in a sense; X Windows was started this way, as was Apache. It's just become more common.

Ineffibles?

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet I could eff them!

BSD

[Quill_28]

Why does everyone when talking about why they don't like the BSD license talk about MS?

What about all the other small software shops that could benefit from BSD code?

My calculations come up with a different number

[Anonymous Coward]

"... David Wheeler does some calculations and comes up with an estimate of 612M USD."

I have a great deal of respect for David Wheeler. His algorithm for estimating the worth of software is a well-established and robust method. But, to be sure, I ran the same calculations...

I reached up into my ass and pulled out a number. But in my attempt, I came up with $1.57. I'll try it a couple more times to make sure.

I'd sell.

[r00t]

He's only asking for a non-exclusive BSD license.
He's not asking to prohibit the GPL versions.

I figure, $800 would do for me. Probably half of
the developers would have a similar attitude.
Maybe 10% would insist on some outrageous value
like "billions and billions" or infinity, and the
remaining 40% would say "go ahead, no charge".

If you only wanted the core code plus a few
drivers needed for your hardware, you could get
about 90% of the code from around 500 developers.

So, your costs are:

1. 200 to 900 thousand for 90% of the code
2. the cost of lawyers and such
3. the cost of replacing 10% you couldn't buy

That's not bad. You're out 1 to 3 million
as far as I can tell.

Re:I'd sell.

[dubious9]

1. If Linus doesn't agree, you're SOL. How much of the core functionality of linux has "0.1 Linus Torvalds" at the top?

>find . -type f | xargs grep "Linus Torvalds" | wc -l
596

And why would Linus ever sell for that measly amount of money? Ok, assume that you could get agreements from however many people make up 90% of the code.

Then you have to rip out who won't sell. What happens if you get one holdout from the 1.x days? You'd be removing a whole *lot* of code that was their work and derived. What about the people that are dead? (as so many others have pointed out). You can't change that license. It'd be hugely expensive to audit the millions of lines to take out who didn't agree. *Then* you'd have to redevelop it without any of the benefits of having the open testing community.

Even if you did take out 10% of the kernel, audited and redeveloped it, it's not linux anymore, it's not stable. Furthermore you've just spent millions of dollars just putting into BSD form, a untried product that has virtually no garuntee that it has any of the stability or any other attribute that has made linux famous.

Even if, for whatever reason, why not just change BSD to your liking (also suggested by many others). Problematic parts could still be tested by the community, there's no auditing or lawyers costs, no buys-out. I can't think of a reason why you would try to buy-out linux if you couldn't get everybody, (which is already impossible because of dead contributors).

In any event your looking at far more expenditure than $1.5M

Re:I'd sell.

[r00t]

I presume that Linus would expect, and get, far
more than $800. The $800 is for my code only.
For somebody else, $0 or $42 or $666 or $54321
might be the price. Maybe Linus gets 0.5 million.

For the dead, you ask their heirs.

The result is indeed not Linux, assuming that
Linus would be unwilling to license or sell the
trademark for an acceptable price. If it's really
the trademark that is wanted, then a decently
large offer (maybe 70 million for a license,
or 2 billion to buy it) should be made for
that -- and stop blabbing about unneeded code.

Re:I'd sell.

[F1re]

It's not impossible to get copyright from dead people, you just have to track down the person that inherited their property. Sure, it's not easy.

FreeBSD *is* Linux! :)

[Xtifr]

For some very very very very very loose definition of "Linux", FreeBSD *is* Linux! No, really. I saw an ad once for a vendor that was selling Linux distributions, and there was FreeBSD on the list of Linux distributions....

Heck, who am I to tell 'em different? I used to refer to Abiword as "my version of Word", as in, "My version of Word seems to have problems with your file, could you try resending as RTF?" Nobody ever questioned me (which just shows how overrated the notion of Word as a "standard" is). :)

Incorrect (was: Nothing: Selling their work)

[lenski]

Any contributor or contributing organization can offer their work for whatever payment they can get for it, under the ordinary boring dual-license approach.

FWIW, "their work" in this context means that part of their contribution to Linux that is not derived from the work of the many thousands of other contributors according to the standard rules of copyright. Linus has stated in LKML that code is very unlikely to avoid being "derived", and therefore being subject to GPL, if it refers directly to kernel symbols, or includes kernel header files.

null vs zero

[radtea]

This is something that people on /. ought to understand: the difference between null and zero.

The market value of the linux kernel is null--it does not have one. That's very different from having a value of zero, which would be the case if there were a market and the only way you could transfer ownership of the kernel in that market would be to give it away.

done with invites

[zoloto]

I'm done with the invites. for those that got em. enjoy em!

SCO?

[Anonymous Coward]

Groklaw found a recent Canopy patent with Merkey's name on it but they didn't seem to touch on the fact that he's posting from the drdos.com domain.

Where did DRDOS fit in with Caldera/SCO/Canopy again?

Financial Analyis Proves Well Known Fact!

[Anonymous Coward]

I ran both Gentoo and BSD through these calculations and I can now say unequivically that BSD is dead and Gentoo is following closely in its footsteps.

SLOCcount

[Anonymous Coward]

You know how much a hello world is worth?

#include <stdio.h>

int
main(int argc, char **argv)
{
printf("Hello world!\n");
return 0;
}

Total Physical Source Lines of Code (SLOC) = 7
Schedule Estimate, Years (Months) = 0.04 (0.48)
Total Estimated Cost to Develop = $ 148

generated using David A. Wheeler's 'SLOCCount'
but i think he wouldn't want anyone to know in this case ;-p

Re:SLOCcount

[Anonymous Coward]

If you hired someone to do it (with contract and everything), I wouldn't be surprised if that was the price you got to pay.

Going once! Going twice!

[Treeluvinhippy]

One linux kernel 2.6.7 downloaded from kernel.org. This kernel has a value of $612 million and the bidding will start at the low low price of $10 dollars. Bid often for as linux slowly gains more and more marketshare the value will increase substationaly making this a sure-fire proft making investment no matter how high the winning bid.

Err...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you mean $699? ;-)

Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you ask Darl, you'll likely just hear him muttering "eleventy billion" or somesuch numbers, while rubbing his hands together greedily and occasionally interjecting "nasty, sneaky IBMses, they stole our preciousss, our precioussssss source code..."

Wife Not Worthless

[4of12]

They also think my wife is worth nothing I might add.

Not so.

It's "per copy" guys.

[Anonymous Coward]

FROM:
Groups.google.com
Subject: Possible GPL Violation of Linux...
Newsgroup: linux.kernel
I.E.
http://groups.google.com/group s?hl=en&lr=&newwindo w=1&c2coff=1&safe=off&threadm=2MMU9-71k-11%40gated -at.bofh.it&rnum=1&prev=/groups%3Fq%3Dg:thl3463994 640d%26dq%3D%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26selm%3D2MMU9-71k- 11%2540gated-at.bofh.it

Jeff Merkey (a money-grubbing intelligent asshole whoops I mean businessman) clarifys his offer writing:

Chris Friesen wrote:

> Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
>
>> We offer to kernel.org the sum of $50,000.00 US for a one time
>> license to the Linux Kernel Source for a single snapshot of
>> a single Linux version by release number. This offer must be
>> accepted by **ALL** copyright holders and this snapshot will
>> subsequently convert the GPL license into a BSD style license for the code.
> For an unlimited use license of the linux tree, $50,000 USD is ludicrously tiny.

$50,000 per copy -- that's a hell of a pricetag. Windows only goes for $100.00 a copy.
You guys should be flattered.

Let's see, 10,000 companies x $50,000.00 a pop = $500,000,000 / year in license fees. What a deal. 500,000,000 / 300 developers = 1.1 million per year for each of you.
Sounds like good business to me.

Companies will line up to do this, and what's great is you will still get new licensees every year, so long as you keep ahead of the curve with innovation.

Jeff

A just prior missive read:

>If you want to spend god alone knows how many hours tracking down
>who wrote what and nuking the relevant bits, that's your time to throw
>away. If you want the same featureset a little faster however, I
>believe SCO are still selling Openserver licenses.
> Dave
We would spend the time or remove the code. OpenServer??? Gag?? Puke??
According to Carl "Mad Dog" McBride Linux is already his "product" (What a joke). OpenServer is not Linux.

If I receive a confirmation from A) Linus or B) Alan then we will profer a license agreement for everyone to review and sign off on via PGP secure email.
We will worry about who is no longer available. We need the core folks whose names appear as the original author in the master header of each file to sign off. They will need to certify which files are theirs and send a confirmation.

This can be done, and if there is a process in place, others can come and give money as well.
It's time ALL YOU GUYS got rewarded for your hard work, and not just those who positioned themselves to get fat stock options and IPO preffered stock for .com stock market Google style IPO scams. It can happen.

Jeff

a comment in the same thread reads

[Anonymous Coward]

From: Gene Heskett (gene.heskett@verizon.net)
Subject: Re: Possible GPL Violation of Linux in Amstrad's E3 Videophone

View this article only
Newsgroups: linux.kernel
Date: 2004-10-08 06:00:33 PST

On Friday 08 October 2004 08:38, Gene Heskett wrote:
>On Friday 08 October 2004 03:15, Jon Masters wrote:
>>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>>Hash: SHA1
>>
>>jmerkey@galt.devicelogics.com wrote:

Interesting too, that address just changed its name to Duncan, it
bounced like a yo-yo. One more clue that this is the fox, trying to
sneak into the penguinhouse for a killing. I just took him out of
the Cc: list...

I repeat:
>My $0.02: Deal with the likes of him at the peril of the GPL.
--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
99.27% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly
Yahoo.com attorneys please note, additions to this message
by Gene Heskett are:
Copyright 2004 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.

There can be no seller

[EmbeddedJanitor]

The value cannot be expressed in dollar terms because there can not be (realisticly) any seller.

The Linux code is owned by, perhaps, thousands of people [the individual contributors/copyrightholders]. Each of these could sell you non-GPL rights to their code, but not to anyone elses.

Linus "owns" probably less than 10% of the code. That'a a much bigger share than the 0.05% or so that I've written, but he still can't sell it.

Just...

[Anonymous Coward]

my 2 cents!

Merkey worked for a Canopy Company

[Anonymous Coward]

Last time I saw Merkey he was working for a Canopy company. Canopy bankrolls SCO. So follow the money people. Jeff's offer is simply another way of trying to help SCO establish value for the lawsuit. Knee bone connected to the leg bone.... The head bone connected to the pelvis bone...

Cost more than $50k to administer

[EmbeddedJanitor]

The lawyers would get every penny.

There are probably well over a thousand individual contributors. How can anyone haggle as to what % they should get ??on a per line basis??: "My code is more complicated than yours...").

There is no single legal entity that can negotiate on behalf of everyone, so there cannot be an agreement on the $50K. Getting everyone together and agreeing on amount would cost a bundle.

If almost everyone agree but, say, 1% of the people refuse then you get into a hostage situation. ie. 99% will take their slice of the $50k and the last 1% say no, or say they want more. Now what? OK, you could in theory rewrite those sections and throw those people out, but that is not realistic. It would cost more than $50k to rewrite that 1% of the code.

At the end of the day the whole idea is broken and is as meaningless as trying to sell/buy the sky.

Ah, more uninformed bullshit from garcia

[Anonymous Coward]

HOW ABOUT A GAPING ASSHOLE, SCARECROW?!?

*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*
g_______________________________________________g
o_/_____\_____________\____________/____\_______o
a|_______|_____________\__________|______|______a
t|_______`._____________|_________|_______:_____t
s`________|_____________|________\|_______|_____s
e_\_______|_/_______/__\\\___--___\\_______:____e
x__\______\/____--~~__________~--__|_\_____|____x
*___\______\_-~____________________~-_\____|____*
g____\______\_________.--------.______\|___|____g
o______\_____\______//_________(_(__>__\___|____o
a_______\___.__C____)_________(_(____>__|__/____a
t_______/\_|___C_____)/______\_(_____>__|_/_____t
s______/_/\|___C_____)_garcia|__(___>___/__\____s
e_____|___(____C_____)\______/__//__/_/_____\___e
x_____|____\__|_____\\_________//_(__/_______|__x
*____|_\____\____)___`----___--'_____________|__*
g____|__\______________\_______/____________/_|_g
o___|______________/____|_____|__\____________|_o
a___|_____________|____/_______\__\___________|_a
t___|__________/_/____|_________|__\___________|t
s___|_________/_/______\__/\___/____|__________|s
e__|_________/_/________|____|_______|_________|e
x__|__________|_________|____|_______|_________|x
*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*

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Mail from Slashdot Fans

[JeffMerkey]

Here's an email from Phil Kaplan stating his views of the offer to license Linux. I thought Slashdot would be a good place to post this. Jeff Phil Kaplan pk2@uranium.club.cc.cmu.edu Phil Kaplan wrote: > hey, retard, even if that pathetic, stupid offer' was a joke, it was a > bad joke, insulting, in poor taste, and indicative of a total cluelessness > on your part, or on the part of whoever holds your leash. some shitheads > back at the canopy group, maybe? there's already a license, called the > GPL. It allows you, and anyone else, to use Linux as much as you want, > copy it, give it to your friends, your customers, even your goldfish if > you like. It's not for sale. the whole point is that it's free. if you > don't get that, or if you're trying to create some kind of paper-thin > foundation for some kind of bullshit legal mumbo-jumbo that you our your > handlers might think will save SCO from total oblivion and the investors > back home from losing their asses (this whole lawsuit was just a pump&dump > scheme anyway), well, you're just an asshole, and you can with my > compliments go fuck yourself. > > > The only thing funny about this email and your comments has to do with physiology. I am amazed and astounded that your brain is able to generate enough electrical energy to make your fingers move to type this. I am not with Canopy, I am with Bryan Sparks, the person who founded the first Linux company. We want to buy out of the GPL. If you can't see this or figure it out then you are acting like a "retard". Jeff

uhh...

[aaron_ds]

afx.h line 205: #define NULL 0
_null.h line 20: # define NULL 0
fci.h line 74: #define NULL 0
fdi.h line 74: #define NULL 0
lmcons.h line 191: #define NULL 0
snados.h line 52: #define NULL 0
windef.h line 56: #define NULL 0

A Diamond in the Rough?

[MerkX]

Even a highly polished 100kt diamond isn't worth one red cent if nobody wants it.

Combining your post with a letter one.

[Nailer]

There is a market for kernels.
There is not a market for Linux kernels.
The Linux kernel still has value in the earlier market.

There is a market for paintings.
There is not a market for Mono Lisas.
The Mona Lisa still has value in the earlier market.

DOS was $50,000 too

[Nashirak]

This seams to be the going rate for operating systems code... the first DOS (QDOS) was bought off a guy by Gates for $50,000 dollars as well. DOS History

What exactly would you be buying?

[syousef]

Asking the price of the Linux Kernel is pointless.

What exactly would you be buying?

The right to make it proprietary? (Sell it or a derivative for a lot of money) That'd be worth a lot to a few of companies - who wouldn't sell it they'd just keep it locked up and continue selling their own product?

The right to use it? Value there would be $0 thanks. You already have that for free unless you want to modify in a way that doesn't comply with the GPL.

The right to sell it. People already do that - oh sorry correction my mistake sell support for it.

The question is pointless because you can't un-GPL it once its been released under GPL...which is the point of that license.

I think the question being asked here is what would it cost to develop something similar? The answer is bucketloads. But why would you want to? How many freaking times does UNIX need to be redeveloped. Go create a different OS.

Re:What exactly would you be buying?

[Anonymous Coward]

The right to use it? Value there would be $0 thanks. You already have that for free unless you want to modify in a way that doesn't comply with the GPL.

It's only worth $0 to you because you already have that right. In the same way that Windows is worth $0 to someone who has allready bought the licenses he need. He won't pay more than $0 for the next license, because he doesn't need it. But the ones he already have a worth more to him than that.

Just like the right to use the Linux kernel is worth more to you (assume that you use it). If I somehow worked out some nice legal agreement, that you could sign and no longer be allowed to use Linux, how much would I have to pay you to sign that? THAT's the value of the license you already have.

Re:What exactly would you be buying?

[argent]

you can't un-GPL it once its been released under GPL

Sure you can. You can't retract the existing GPL-licensed version, but you can release a version under another license. You can also withdraw your copy of the source and hope nobody else is actively distributing it... that wouldn't work for Linux, of course, but I've run into a few now-commercial products that had earlier open-licensed (including GPL) versions that I can't find source for.

There was a bunch of open-source NeXTstep software, for example, that's completely vanished as far as I have been able to tell.

Re:What exactly would you be buying?

[argent]

If I somehow worked out some nice legal agreement, that you could sign and no longer be allowed to use Linux, how much would I have to pay you to sign that?

Depends on the terms. If it meant I would have to buy new licenses if I ever had to use Linux in the future, it'd depend on what that fee was. If it just meant I'd have to replace my existing Linux boxes or pay for them, the issue would be academic because i don't have any.

What licence was BSD operating under in the 80s?

[HornWumpus]

I don't think it was the current one.

Not always!

[multipartmixed]

Sometimes it's 0L. At other times, it's ((void *)0). And I'm sure that at sometime in the past it was ((char *)0).

Want a nonGPL Linux ?

[Anonymous Coward]

As Linux has just modelled itself on other UNIX like operating systems ( primarily Minix and System V ) why not just use them and make the changes yourself ?

BSD ?? ... those are install disks

[Anonymous Coward]

> the source code to Windows XP, Windows 2000 Professional or Mac OS X under a BSD license would cost considerably more than the prices you quote.

When did Linux start shipping under BSD license ?.
(btw, Mac OS X's Darwin is BSD licensed) ..

And, I suppose all those Redhat disks contain
source code ? .. They are install binaries.

Except that tha GPL is pissed on daily

[^BR]

Plenty of boxes ship with modified embedded Linux without the sources, if you ask the sources you are laughed at.

Try to get the kernel modification for Check Point SecurePlatform for example.

Your point is moot as the GPL is just not respected...

IMHO.

[Anonymous Coward]

In my humble opinion, all this debating is really very unnecessary.

The mere fact that GNU/Linux offers a Free, publicly-owned, competitive alternative to Microsoft makes it worth (at the very least) hundreds of billions, but, more appropriately, priceless.