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What's The Linux Kernel Worth?

Posted by timothy on from the tree-falls-in-forest-makes-sound dept.

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.

4 of 376 comments (clear)

  1. Nothing by AKAImBatman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

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  2. Merkey's offer doesn't make sense to me ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

    1. Re:Merkey's offer doesn't make sense to me ... by John+Harrison · · Score: 5, Interesting
      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.

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  3. 10 Billion ++ by HexaByte · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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".

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    HexaByte - he's a square and a half!