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Who Wrote, and Paid For, 2.6.20

Posted by kdawson on from the names-and-companies dept.

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."

5 of 238 comments (clear)

  1. Broadcom by oliverthered · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's a shame they didn't contribute the firmware for their wireless cards.

    --
    thank God the internet isn't a human right.
  2. Re:Fairly Interesting Overview by LWATCDR · · Score: 3, Interesting

    SGI is interesting but I seem to remember that they dropped IRIX and are going to Linux everywhere. They also have some really nice expensive systems that I doubt that many hobbyist have sitting around.
    In fact if you go to their home page you will see them right on the front page and yes they run Linux.
    People want to run Linux on their servers and HPC clusters. If you want to sell servers and HPC clusters that run Linux you better make sure that Linux supports all the cool stuff that sets you apart from a bunch of Intel white boxes.
    The fastest way to do that is to write it yourself.

    --
    See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
  3. Re:Fairly Interesting Overview by mbrod · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Having recently switched over my M$ box to pure Ubuntu, no dual boot. I was thinking there had to be serious money and talent behind everything now as opposed to about 7 years ago when I last messed with Linux much. Everything just works so good now and requires minimal configuration. Mucho thanks to all those individuals and companies who contribute in any way.

  4. Re:SCO? by paeanblack · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The Slashdot QOTD monkey produced the following:

    Knowledge is power -- knowledge shared is power lost. -- Aleister Crowley

  5. Re:BDFL by the_womble · · Score: 4, Interesting
    No, it proves that open source is a good business model that is becoming widely accepted.

    Incidentally, why is this supposed to be news - I thought that any one who knew anything about open source knew this, and that only stupid journalists get it wrong