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Myth of Linux Hobby Coders Exposed
Eh-Wire writes "Stuart Cohen, CEO of the Open Source Development Labs, does a short piece on the myth of renegade hackers coding in their parent's basements to create the Linux OS. He suggests this hasn't been the case for many years and goes on to claim that of the top 25 core developers, more than 90% of them are fully employed with some of the largest technology companies in the world. Stuart goes on to explode the myth of renegade programmers by saying, 'Sure, it represents a new way to create software, but the actual process looks a lot like how enterprise software has been made for decades.' A short but interesting read."
Interesting article that raises an even more interesting issue, possibly legal: Aren't these coders constrained by the same template IP contracts found in most corporations today? The basic distillation of these constraints stipulate an employee basically gives up their rights and "software" no matter when it's written, how it's written... the company "owns" anything said employee writes. Are these OSS coders and contributors seeing special waivers in their employment contracts? I know the article says the community has formal procedures in place to protect OSS IP -- but what are those?
(I know these contracts are crap, but if they get your name in writing it can be a can of worms to draw a bright line between things that you (the employee) own and things they (the companies) own. I, as a contractor and consultant, have always taken contracting agreements and added my own modification which companies I work for must agree to before I'll sign the contract (I'll not get into specifics) and so far I've only had one company refuse.)
Is there empirical evidence these contributors are doing this on the up and up? I know the OSS considers the community nothing but good, but I have a certain lack of trust for large faceless, morally and ethically bankrupt corporations (which includes pretty much all of them).
The simple explanation could be that it just seems a lot more romantic and heroic to think that a bunch of people in their parents' basement are taking on Microsoft...
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
This 'new finding' was fabricated by choosing the Top 25 Linux Developers (because 25 is the magic number that fits the results they want.)
Truth is, there are hundreds of major, active kernel developers.
have just been pwn3d.
No longer can anyone use the geek in their basement argument.(I know I know, im generalizing, so sue me)
Damn them renegade prgrammers, they have been the bane of my life for many many years!
Linux has grown up and had done so many years before most people who know about it now even knew that it existed. This is similar to how the Internet and email existed for decades before the general public knew anything about it.
Now, many companies, and even government organizations, have their hands in Linux because it provides real advantages over other systems.
The myth discussed in this article is really intended for a bunch of PHBs and people who aren't that technically inclined, who believe that Linux is a toy used by rogue hackers to break into peoples' Windoze boxes and steal their social security numbers... The kind of PHBs who wrote a book I recently read. Linux was mentioned only once, and that sentence stated something to the effect that, "Linux, a free software program available in the public domain..." Yeah. Even programmers know what the public domain is better than whatever PHB wrote that disgusting phrase.
Linux is not the begining of anything. Linux is a kernel that works with the GNU OS. It's just one component. Actually the real history of GNU is far, far away from what this guy is telling. It started as a revolution, it didn't recieve economic support, and rms was unemployed.
Please read this: http://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.html
and specially this: http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Well there goes my theory that Linus Torvalds is "Zero Cool" from Hackers and he is married to Angelina "Acid Burn" Jolie ::sad face::
Beat the computer, program your life.
I code the project that feeds me eight feet from my bed, both located in a very small studio in a communal warehouse type deal. I don't have customers that come in and chat with me regularly, because my space isn't really set up like that - there's dirty clothes and all my messy art's done in here as well;
I thank my lucky stars that this sort of setup works, as the work environment is optimal for me - no set hours, no boss, right in downtown. Just have to live simply.
I love it.
Dada Mail - Program, Art Project or Absurdity?
Once again, an article just for the sake of filling up space.
He suggests this hasn't been the case for many years and goes on to claim that of the top 25 core developers, more than 90% of them are fully employed with some of the largest technology companies in the world.
Yes, it makes the article more interesting to read. But it doesn't prove nor should be used to draw any conclusions. In other news, 90% of the top 25 swimmers, are very good and experienced swimmers. Swimming is not a hobby.
Number one, those people are already employed full-time, so they ARE doing a hobby.
Number two, if the top 25 people who contribute are doing a hobby part-time, and they're the top 25 people, then what does that say for the rest of the contributors to Linux? There are probably thousands of them.
This seems to actually DEFINE that Linux is coded by hobbyists. I don't know where they think this proves otherwise (that it's a MYTH.)
Cover your eyes and click this link!
The article winds up by saying that Linux is in professional hands. Perhaps that's so, at least for the kernel(certainly less so than other OSS projects), but there is a flip side. To the exact same extent that the ranks of Linux hackers become more professional, they also become less able to claim altruism or objectivity. Somebody whose livelihood is tied up in promoting something simply cannot avoid self-interested bias when it comes to decisions about it or comparison to alternatives. I'm not saying that's a good thing or a bad thing, but it's reality. Anybody who wants to tout the "professionalization" of Linux had better be prepared to tone down some of the moralistic lecturing as well. They're becoming a business competing with other businesses, and that doesn't grant much moral high ground.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
of the top 25 core developers, more than 90% of them are fully employed
...people that are fully employed usually have more time than those that do it in their spare time.
If the linux team consisted of 25 full-time employees and 10000 volunteers, I'd expect the full-time employees to take the top 25. Doh.
I'm not quite sure what the story here is. Is it that there are any at all, or is it suggesting that most of the linux developers are like that?
Besides, on the whole "how is it organized part", the GPL is a software license, not a development license. If you want to run your code tree like a cathedral, you can. It's simply a matter of what is most efficient, just like for businesses.
Still, I don't see the real news here. Full-time employees do more than volunteers? Huge projects need a review process and managers, both OSS and not? The important part is still what sets them apart, not the similarities. In my opinion, at least.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Make no mistake, Linux is in professional hands
yeah, like these guys.
Perhaps I wasn't captivated by the same myth as this guy, but I don't really see what is so sensational about Linux contributers being otherwise employed. If the coding is done while not being paid for it, it is a hobby. Doesn't matter if you also happen to code for money. Can't an electrician go home and tinker with electrical things as a hobby? Now, what might be interesting is if it turned out that the top 25 Linux contributers were actually being paid by an employer to contribute to Linux. Other than that, who cares?
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
a) Their copyright.
b) The company's permission to release it under an OSS license on their behalf.
You can have the latter, without having the former. That'd mean the company would be able to make a commercial product with the code, relicense the code, and the coder would not. But if released in a proper fashion, the license is still valid. And he, the person, could make a derivative of what he, the employee, has written under that license.
The only time there could be a problem is if the company has claim to the IP and has not been aware of its use (possibly because the coder thought they had no claim). But these are employed to work on the kernel, and are perfectly aware of it being licensed out.
In short, the only difference is whether the code has any commercial value on its own. If it doesn't make sense except for the specific task in the kernel, it doesn't really matter. The rest is about who can use it in other projects. I'd be more than happy to write OSS code "for hire".
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Parent is a troll, read the last line.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
This goes to show how the metaphors in ESR's The Cathedral and the Bazaar often are not useful in describing software. I know of no software project that can be described as having a 'Bazaar' model, except for projects that consist largely of disconnected components such as CPAN or collections of drivers for OSs (including Linux), but I think these are special cases.
A more apt description is 'Open Cathedral', in my opinion.
Wikipedia is also like a 'Bazaar', but that also falls under the concept of many parts that are not precisely interconnected.
Not from where I'm sitting.
I've done enterprise software development. Managing the releases is something that the Linux kernel developers don't know how to do. In real software companies, there is a quality assurance (QA) team whose purpose is to make sure that the releases pass standardized tests. I don't think the kernel developers know what that mean.
Want an example? Download the 2.6.0 kernel, untar it, and do the following:
This is supposed to build a kernel with the default options. Sounds relatively simple, right? Well, it's not, because about 10 seconds after you press ENTER, compilation halts with an error:
That's right - you can't even build it! From an enterprise standpoint, this isn't just embarrassing, it's pathetic. It shows that there is virtually no real quality control in the kernel releases. How in the world could the kernel developers release a version of Linux without even checking to see if it compiles normally?
Maybe you're thinking it's just a one-time fluke? Well, you'd be wrong. Because the 2.6.1 and 2.6.2 kernels have the same bug!
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
...on the myth of renegade hackers coding in their parent's basements to create the Linux OS. He suggests this hasn't been the case for many years and goes on to claim that of the top 25 core developers, more than 90% of them are fully employed with some of the largest technology companies in the world.
Just because they're fully employed by some of the largest tech companies doesn't mean they don't live in their parent's basements and telecommute.
Set A can always include Set B.
It's like saying that since the wealthiest people in the world are tech geeks, and wealthy people get hot babes, that tech geeks have hot babes.
Perhaps most tech geeks - even those who are wealthy - don't have hot babes (or hunks, whatever) - but most wealthy people (of which tech geeks are a very wealthy subset) do have hot babes/hunks?
Therefore, it's totally possible for them to live in very fancy basements in their parents homes and still be fully employed by big tech firms.
And maybe a few actually own their own homes, but who knows, because the statistics are flawed by virtue of the premise as stated.
Think of it as a Venn diagram in action. Just because top models hang with some economists doesn't make economists party animals and opposite-gender magnets.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
You are right, they might be very smart 12 year old programmers. That's rare as the average age was between 22 and 37 the last time FOSS looked things. Still, I know one very good 13 year old perl guy. In the free software world, what you do and make is more important than where you live or who you are. That's in sharp contrast to the commercial world where turds like Bill Gates had enough money at birth to bully dummies into dumpsters for code or buy it for his vaults.
The statement "Stuart goes on to explode the myth of renegade prgrammers by saying, 'Sure, it represents a new way to create software, but the actual process looks a lot like how enterprise software has been made for decades." Is an interesting turn of events if true. Just a few years ago these were the numbers:
The bottom up nature of free software is a very real and welcome departure from "traditional," 1980s, NDA encumbered, commercial software development. While it's great to have companies supporting various projects, I doubt seriously they will be able to match the creativity of the world at large in numbers or range of applications. The best thing that companies can do is to free their people and let them solve their problems as they please. Free software environments are far richer, more pleasing and of higher quality than those put together traditionally. The "renegade" programmer sharing his information and scratching itches is what makes this possible and that's what free software is all about.
The myth discussed in this article is really intended for a bunch of PHBs and people who aren't that technically inclined, who believe that Linux is a toy used by rogue hackers to break into peoples' Windoze boxes and steal their social security numbers...
Well then, I'm not so worried by the DDoS on the article that's kept me from reading it.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Everybody knows that The SCO Group created Linux
Oh, wait...
It isn't true that we ALL live in our parents basements...
...Some of us live in our parents attics.
How many of those who work for large companies as a "day job" are actually hired to work on the Linux kernel as their "day job"?
How many of them don't work for IBM or some other company that have a huge vested interest in the Linux kernel (SuSE/Novell, RedHat, etc)
How many of these people work on non-OSS for a day job and basically are subsidising OSS through non-OSS work?
If any work for non-OSS companies, how many of those companies know that this is going on?
If any work for non-OSS companies, how many can actually be working in a conflict of interest situation?
My theory has always been that few people actually work and make a living doing OSS. Most work for non-OSS/commercial/proprietary companies and are basically subsidized by these companies. Also, if these people aren't already independently wealthy, they wouldn't be able to feed themselves or their families by their work in OSS.
...no matter how many documents you make me sign.
I don't care if it is illegal. My mind is my own and you can't have it. Nor will I sell it to you.
I don't care if it is unethical for me to sign a document (in bad faith) saying that you own everything I think of. It is still my mind, and there is still nothing you can do about it.
I feel completely justified in continuing to write my free code, and releasing it to the public domain under a pseudonym. This is how I preserve intellectual freedom in a world of intellectual property.
When the laws are unjust, the just become outlaws.
How this is different from today is left as an exercise for the reader.
Perhaps they meant "hacker" in the correct, original sense. Maybe they know the difference between "hacker" and "cracker".
It was a really good paper.
I'm more then capable of talking about what I do for a living. Saying that the projects are classified is a habit of mine so people won't take offense when I tell them that I can't tell them something. It is perfectly okay to say "I work on classified information and deal with intelligence that can't be discussed." In some cases, yes you have to completely keep quiet about what you work on, but usually they'll move you somewhere because its pretty hard to live a lie and this whole second life of yours has to be put together. Anyway, anyone working on any such projects knows exactly what they can't talk about and exaclty what they can. Oh and one more thing to keep in mind in case you ever are talking to someone with some level of clearance, it is their job to tell you when to stop and their job to control what they answer. Often times I find when I'm talking to people about what I do they'll ask something and then be like "I'm sorry I shouldnt have asked that" implying that they did something wrong, and I always politely respond "Don't worry about, you can ask whatever you want, it is my job to tell you when enough is enough".
Regards,
Steve
You're looking at the wrong part of the system. You're criticising the product based on internal development snapshots, and criticising the release process due to confusing product releases with kernel-developer releases, which are roughly equivalent to the code that would be sent between groups within an enterprise product development team. That's an easy mistake due the public nature of the engineering process.
The vanilla 2.6.0 kernel (vanilla meaning the one from kernel.org) is not intended to mean that the kernel has reached a threshold of quality that you'd compare with a commercially released software product.
It is a quality milestone of sorts, but the main purpose of 2.6.0 was to say "right, this is the point at which we commit to the feature set and are moderately happy to begin tidying the implementation".
In other words, Linux 2.6.0 is comparable with somewhere just before alpha quality release from a QA standpoint. It's not intended for public consumption; it's not considered "ready for beta testers" at that point.
However, so many people took it that way, which is why now we have these silly "sub-point-point" releases: 2.6.11.1, 2.6.11.2, 2.6.11-rc3, 2.6.11-rc3-bk2-aa1 etc. just to make absolutely clear that there are staged releases, which developers need due to the distributed process, but which are not considered ready for widespread testing. We're seeing longer and longer sub-point release cycles, just because there are more people involved who treat the numbers as comparable with classic software product versions. That's fine for some people, but for secondary kernel developers it's a pain.
Linux has a multi-level QA system. The one which corresponds to a "Release" that you mean in an enterprise product is called a "Vendor Kernel" in Linux terminology. You should understand that QA is a very large part of the process of producing a "Vendor Kernel".
In other words, you're looking in the wrong part of the system, and it's an easy mistake because the development process is so welcoming to public participation. For enterprise software style QA, look at the place in the system where that's done: the distributions.
(That's another way the terminology is different. A "distribution" in Linux means something very different from a "distributor" in the enterprise software sense. The larger "Distribution" vendors perform a lot of QA work and also significant development - they are roughly analogous to your enterprise QA, Testing and Release Management teams. "Distributors" typically just sell stuff and provide after-sales support.)
-- Jamie
Seems a bit weird to look at the top 25 developpers. It's normal that the ones who have more time to contribute to FOSS projects would be those who are paid to do it. The hobbyists, have a full time job to attend to. Sure, if you limit yourself to a few of the biggest projects, with the widest deployment, you are going to find a lot of "professional contributers" (by professional contributer I mean people whose job is to contribute, I don't mean to say that the others are novices to the field).
But if you look at the thousands upon thousands of projects out there, It is unlikely that most the project maintainers are hired to do so, and much less the hordes of part-time contributers. It's a narrow-scope myth buster.
I like my dinosaurs feathery, and my pterosaurs hairy (or is it pycnofibery?)