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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.
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.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
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.
612million / [Developers.Count] = $650 (per machine)
;)
Who woulda thunk it.....
liqbase
we should get a better estimate by asking the nice folks at SCO. They seem to know much about this.
... put a price on it. Linux is priceless. Mac OSX is $50.00. Windows is a paperclip and a bubblegum wrapper.
I'm going to go create my own technology news site, with blackjack and hookers. You know what? Forget the news site.
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!
"They want me to be a whore!" -- Linus Torvalds.
In need of reliable and affordable server monitoring?
Is that by the same accounting used by SCO???
Now, I have to wonder, how much would it cost to pay Microsoft to GPL their Office product file formats?
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
The worst that could happen is a fork and a name change.
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
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
It's worth about $699 per CPU! Don't tell these litigious bastards that at that price, it's way too cheap! :)
London's finest organic fairtrade coffee
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?
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 $50,000 for a license.
Or can someone explain this to me?
The cost of a product is not necessarily equal to the cost of developing it.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Sure it wasn't Stef Murkey?
See what I've been reading.
It's like trying to put monetary value on a Van Gogh or a Matisse. The Linux kernel is truly priceless. You could never get that kind of collaboration even with the most highly paid software engineers, beacuse they don't do it for money, neither did Van Gogh.
..thats its value for me.
Life-time (eternal) access to the best OS kernel in the world - for free!!
What is air worth? Some things have great value, but simply trying to measure that value in dollars is to misunderstand the nature of that value.
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
MU!
klink? something from the KDE krowd I suspect!
-ps. I have 5 gmail invites left. post here with your email address backwards and i'll send one to you. First 5 posted here (not emailed) get them. I'm trying desperately to get rid of em
what else could it mean? If I get a snapshot of Linux undera BSD license I can do with it whatevera BSD license allows which does allow me to redistribute under a BSD lciense!!!
Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
He made it quite clear that he does in fact want a BSD style license, IOW the right to distribute binaries (and source, if he so wishes).
One thing that I could imagine the kernel hackers might agree to is a binary-only license for use in one product. But that would still cost orders of magnitude more than 50k$.
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.
Clearly it's $699.
Why bother.
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.
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.
You are not alone.
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
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?
May the Maths Be with you!
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.
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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
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
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?!
..... 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.
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
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
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.
"Either lower your dosage or up it."
/me goes off to change his sig
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)
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.
You can't get all the people in a building to agree to walk across the street for ice cream.
Never mind this deal...
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
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.
Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
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.
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?
If con is the opposite of pro, is Congress the opposite of progress?
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.
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?
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
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
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.
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.
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.
What's it worth? Hmmm, I'll throw out the first number that pops into my head...How does 503 sound?
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
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.
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.
an ill wind that blows no good
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.
Remember the days when Republicans were the party of fiscal responsibility?
Are you implying that "Linux" is an actual marketable brand?!!! /. trolls keep telling me that only basement-dwelling loser troglodites use Linux!
All the
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
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.
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.
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".
HexaByte - he's a square and a half!
You're paying WAY too much for your blank CDs!
HexaByte
HexaByte - he's a square and a half!
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
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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?
So, MSWindows code market value is zero, too, since you're not going to be able to buy it.
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.
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.
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.
Despite what EULAs say, most software is sold, not licensed.
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.
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
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
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).
You can always come to slashdot for a good rehash of the week's stupidest LKML threads.
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)
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.
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.
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!
Despite what EULAs say, most software is sold, not licensed.
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.
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.
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. :)
There's so little difference between politics and jihad lately...
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.
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.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
....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).
Is this Jeff Merkey possibly a brother to Paul Murky of Merky Research, the assistants to the good folks at Car Talk?
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.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
Nothing.Or do you always take one case and then make huge sweeping generalizations? Or maybe you are just an idiot.
Think apache.
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?
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.
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).
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.
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.
i guess you didn't get my joke :) HH was good though. didn't watch it too much. caught all the re-runs
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.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
I'm done with the invites. for those that got em. enjoy em!
You know how much a hello world is worth?
;-p
#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
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.
>
They also think my wife is worth nothing I might add.
Not so.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
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.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
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.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Even a highly polished 100kt diamond isn't worth one red cent if nobody wants it.
-MerkX
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).
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.
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
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.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I don't think it was the current one.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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).
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
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.
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 ?
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...
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.
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.
Despite what EULAs say, most software is sold, not licensed.
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.
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'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.
Despite what EULAs say, most software is sold, not licensed.
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.
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.
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.
Despite what EULAs say, most software is sold, not licensed.
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.
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.
Despite what EULAs say, most software is sold, not licensed.
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.