Slashdot Mirror
Who Wrote, and Paid For, 2.6.20
Corbet writes "LWN.net did some data mining through the kernel source repository and put together an analysis of where the patches came from. It turns out that most kernel code is contributed by people paid to do the work — but the list of companies sponsoring kernel development has a surprise or two." The article's conclusion: "The end result of all this is that a number of the widely-expressed opinions about kernel development turn out to be true. There really are thousands of developers — at least, almost 2,000 who put in at least one patch over the course of the last year. Linus Torvalds is directly responsible for a very small portion of the code which makes it into the kernel. Contemporary kernel development is spread out among a broad group of people, most of whom are paid for the work they do. Overall, the picture is of a broad-based and well-supported development community."
TFA: "It is not uncommon to see Linux referred to as a volunteer-created system, as opposed to the corporate-sponsored, proprietary alternatives. There has been little research, however, into how much work on Linux is truly 'volunteer' - done on a hacker's spare, unpaid time. In general, the assumption that Linux is created by volunteers is simply accepted."
Thing is, even though some of those changes were done by programmers in the course of their paid jobs, isn't the work still being "volunteered," albeit by the company rather than an individual? As companies, Red Hat, IBM, Novell, or Big Roy's Heating and Plumbing don't need to help improve the kernel, nor are they directly paid for their work on it. They simply do so because a better Linux kernel does benefit them directly or indirectly, as do many individual volunteers.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
It's really quite interesting the amount of funding that is sent in the direction of the devs working on the Linux kernel. I'm curious what would happen if the funding was spontaneously cut. Linux was built from scratch and supported for free back in the day, but would the main developers continue to work or even be interested at all if they weren't being paid?
...the list of companies sponsoring kernel development has a surprise or two.... a number of the widely-expressed opinions about kernel development turn out to be true.
So... the surprise is that there is no surprise?
Best Windows Freeware
It is just confirmation of old statement that GPL(v2) provides better (at moment best) ground for cooperation between vendors.
Many companies are willing to control what OS does with their software and hardware - and Linux gives them that chance on cheap. But even more so, GPL allows Linux to "merge" back possible code base "forks". That's next to impossible with BSD licensed code most tend to keep closed.
Let's just hope Linux would be able to go on surviving the "snowball" effect of the merges.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
Often it's not that the employers dedicate staff to work on the kernel. It's that they hit a snag and contribute the time so they can go about using the kernel.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I work in government, and talk with RedHat and IBM all the time about linux. When the article summary touted "a few surprises," I thought, "RedHat and IBM aren't the biggest contributors?" Turns out there was no surprise, after all...they're the top attributable contributors. Is anyone else surprised by this?
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
Why is it shocking. Red Hat, IBM, and Novell hope to make a lot of money from Linux.
Then you have the expensive systems that use Linux
Intel and HP are still hopping that the Itantium will work out in the end and frankly Linux is the big OS for the Itantium. Not to many hobbiest have an Itantium sitting around so Intel and HP probably contribute a lot of code for the Itantium port.
IBM sells a lot of Power systems that run Linux so they probably contributed a lot of code to support the new Power6. Not to mention the the 360/370/Zmachine port.
Then you have Mips contributing for the embedded market.
Linux is now big business.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Your poster did not like the author's odd reluctance to use the word "I".
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
where does open source mean unpaid?
09:F9:11:02 - 9D:74:E3:5B - D8:41:56:C5 - 63:56:88:C0
From TFA
Finding an answer to that question is somewhat trickier than looking at who wrote the patches, mostly because very few developers say "I wrote this on behalf of my employer." The approach taken by your editor was relatively simplistic, but, perhaps, the best that is practical. Any patch whose author's given email address indicates a corporate affiliation is assumed to have been developed by an employee of that corporation. So any patch posted by somebody with an ibm.com email address is accounted as having been done by an IBM employee.
While I still find the result interesting, and while I also would like to know which organizations contribute the most to the kernel, I don't know that this method is really a good way to reflect whether the work was done in a "sponsored" fashion.
That is, just because someone's email address shows that they're from IBM, doesn't necessarily mean that they were being paid by IBM to explicitly work on the kernel. For all we know, they might have "15 minutes of real, actual work" like this guy and are just hacking away in their cube because they're bored. Maybe not, but still, for he purpose of determining which companies contribute most (or the individuals motivations to contribute), that seems like a shaky method of proving or disproving things.
It seems they got paid for what they were asked to do.
The same could be said of government. Very few people would argue for entirely abolishing either government or corporations. Many people would argue for placing limits on the power of governments and corporations (checks and balances).
Most people are extremely dependent on the government (roads, military, courts, etc.). Does that mean that they are "biting the hand that feeds them" when they argue for limited government?
The surprise is how twisted this study is. The author ignored the opinion of authors to concentrate on email addresses and the main conclusion is that 65% of kernel developers have a job. That people able to contribute to the Linux kernel would have a job is not much of a surprise. Ignoring the opinion of those you are trying to study is.
So, let me quote all the relevent sections to back up what I have said.
The statistics are all very nice, but the conclusion is forced. I'd go with the opinion of the authors themselves, code is still not being written on behalf of companies.
That's an unfortunate conclusion and things are changing. When free software takes the place of non free, the entire mechanism now "supporting" M$ and others will switch to free software authorship. When that happens hardware makers will step up to the plate with free drivers and contribute significant code. Many already do this. User feedback will still be important and of high quality, so the actual distribution of "this code paid for by Broadcom" vrs, "this code from Broadcom fixed by 101 happy users" is still hard for someone like me to predict.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
You sir are why I disapprove of unlicensed breeding.
Snags could include things like "driver not working" to "driver not present/existing", etc. Snag doesn't mean "Linus is a shit head, fucked up the kernel and now I gotsta fix it." Snag just means something that isn't working yet.
If you look at a lot of non-distro patches, they're from people who ran into some problem or another.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I hope, when they die, cartoon characters have to answer for their sins.
...The darkest secret that Microsoft and other software companies don't want the rest of the world to know.
Companies are shelling out billions of dollars each year just to run some software that needs to be renewed, updated and purchased again and again and again.
Some companies are investing their workers or their donations into the community software projects because in some way, it will truly benefit them in a way that will not expire the way proprietary software does. So when people start noticing that businesses do more than just "use" F/OSS, but they contribute to it in a way that makes it more usable for themselves. And depending on the way they contribute, they can also write off some on their taxes as part of a tax strategy.
So companies can spend their software budget in a way the keeps them locked in and paying ridiculous annual fees and subscriptions, or they can actually pay to get the software they actually want in the way they want it, benefit themselves, benefit the public and even build a lot of good will in various communities.
I am hopeful to see the rest of the F/OSS revolution in my life time...
Many patches are fed in through email lists etc where the maintainer (more likely to be a "named person") picks it up and pushes it upstream. I expect many volunteers will be in that group.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
There is no contradiction in critiquing the negative aspects of corporate power while praising its positive ones. The fact that most /.ers do not argue in favor of socialist revolutions imply that they see certain good in a market economy where corporations are bound to exist. That doesn't mean that we have to submissively accept everything that comes with that.
"This shows that opensores does just not work. It has been a great vision, but now it's time to move on except for some braindead hippies who just refuse to accept the realities."
How do you figure exactly? It looks to me like a number of companies find it to be a profitable endeavor to pay their developers to work on a free and open project. The benefits to, say, IBM, are an increasingly stable server platform they can sell on their hardware. RedHat, for example, runs their business off of supporting Linux - and as a result also has a vested interest in its development.
Honestly, I don't know how you came to the conclusion that 'opensores does just not work' (great English, by the by). I'd say that it's evidence that Open Source not only works, but if your project is useful to a company, they may just hire you to develop it for them.
110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
What retard modded this as flamebait?
Some university courses actually require their students to submit code to a development project like Linux.
If you really thought this was embarassing, modding down the facts isn't going to change it.
It's up to the women to get involved. I'm not stopping them. Others can speak for themselves.
Linux is what you make of it. If you want a "less geeky" distribution, however you define that, either contribute to a distribution or start your own.
I would think contributions would be evaluated on their own merit, regardless of the contributor's gender. Besides, when all you know about the other person is their name and email address, you can never be completely sure about their gender, either.
Usage: km/h for speed (kilometers per hour); kph for very slow impulses (kilopond hours).