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."

Comments

SCO?

[fluch]

...did neither contribute nor pay?! Strange...

Re:SCO?

[Poppler]

Luckily, Sony appears to be a major contributer. Look's like we'll FINALLY see their rootkit ported to Linux.

Re:SCO?

[paeanblack]

The Slashdot QOTD monkey produced the following:

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

Re:SCO?

[heritage727]

Not really. As I understand it, most of what is labelled IBM was stolen from SCO.

Re:SCO?

[DJ Rubbie]

Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.

So losing that power really is a good thing.

Define "volunteer."

[Rob T Firefly]

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.

Re:Define "volunteer."

[Anonymous Coward]

They mean "volunteer" in the sense that's completely obvious from the context, not in any sense derived from Pointless Nerd Hairsplitting.

Re:Define "volunteer."

[bad_fx]

Is it sad that I actually went carefully back through the article to see how much "Big Roy's Heating and Plumbing" had actually contributed.....? :-/

Re:Define "volunteer."

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

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?

If my large copy jobs are routinely late and I call Officemax and tell them they need to get their heads out of their asses, fire the guy responsible, and get me my stuff on time; am I volunteering my free consulting services to Officemax? It is all a matter of perspective. The term "volunteer" in our culture generally carries implications of altruism rather than self interest. The important point to take away from this is that despite the common perception otherwise, most Linux development is done for profit, even if that profit is not accumulated in so direct a manner as selling the OS.

Re:Define "volunteer."

[krlynch]

So the work is not volunteered, it is a component of an agenda.

Doesn't the same argument apply to non-monetarily-compensated "volunteers"? Don't they have an agenda as well?

Re:Define "volunteer."

[Anonymous Coward]

not in any sense derived from Pointless Nerd Hairsplitting.

Oh, sorry, I thought this was SlashDot.

Re:Define "volunteer."

[prelelat]

I don't agree with your standpoint. I do think that IBM Oracle and other companies benifit from this kind of program. On the other hand most people benifit in some way from contributing code to linux in the first place. People use it for experiance to get a job, to make the OS that they run better, to be apart of something and make themselves feel better. Just because a company is volenteering programmers to the cause because its benifiting them doesn't mean its not volenteering. Its like saying donating to linux because you want it to work better for you so that you can produce more money is not really a donation.

Most people donate, volenteer for something because they know it will benifit them in the end(how many people at Harvard who have volenteering on their application to the school volenteered because it was something they wanted to do, I would guess half does that make their time in a soup kitchen less valuable or appreciated?). This doesn't mean that its any less noble in the end.

Re:Define "volunteer."

[iabervon]

For Red Hat and IBM, it's not really any more "volunteer" work than any corporate development work. Nobody pays Microsoft to write new versions of Office; they write them so that they can try to sell them. Big Roy's H&P and Google are unusual in contributing changes they made for internal use.

Re:Define "volunteer."

[morgan_greywolf]

Exactly. Most of the driver development in the early days were done by people who -- gasp, shock -- had that particular piece of hardware and needed it to work with the Linux kernel. Much driver development is *still* done that way, although some driver work is now sponsored by companies who develop the hardware (i.e., Broadcom)

Most everyone working on the kernel has an agenda and that's okay -- open source isn't about communism or pure philanthropy, it's more of a libertarian or anarchocapitalist philosophy.

Re:Define "volunteer."

['nother poster]

Volunteer does not HAVE to mean without compensation, it means without coercion, of their own free will. Many volunteers are not compensted for their efforts, but others are. The people who join the U.S. military are volunteers, but they do get paid during their term of service and they do get other benefits. No less volunteers, just compensated volunteers.

Re:Define "volunteer."

[VWJedi]

The term "volunteer" in our culture generally carries implications of altruism rather than self interest.

If you put it that way, no one is a "volunteer developer" for linux. They write / change code for their own benefit (to add features, improve functionality). Once they've finished, they usually give their code to "the linux community", but the reason they do the work in the first place is because they want to fix / improve the way their system runs.

Re:Define "volunteer."

[mark3748]

Companies that provide new code and patches to the open source community are in no way obligated to provide them.... they can keep the changes to themselves and never release them to the community. The work that they do and give back to the community is therefore "volunteered".

Most everyone working on the kernel has an agenda and that's okay -- open source isn't about communism or pure philanthropy, it's more of a libertarian or anarchocapitalist philosophy.

This is quite possibly the best explanations of the open source community that I've read.

Re:Define "volunteer."

[CodeBuster]

Most people donate, volenteer for something because they know it will benifit them in the end

This is what economists call utility whereby actions that result in no clear economic gain for those giving of their resources are explained in that they increase the giver's amount of utility. This is really just a fancy way of saying that people give of their resources (up to a point), despite the fact that they do not directly benefit, because it makes them happy or they derive enjoyment equal to the value of the resources given away in return.

This doesn't mean that its any less noble in the end.

That is a subjective opinion, but most people would look more favorably upon truly selfless giving rather than giving in an attempt to get *something* in return whether that be public approval, loyalty, or future expectation of favor(s).

Re:Define "volunteer."

[jvkjvk]

Let me refine this a little further and then re-ask the question.

Certainly one can lump every part of a set into another set if you broaden the definition of the container. So, if you equate a corporate agenda with a volunteer's agenda then yes, the same argument applies.

I believe that part of the distinction between volunteers and paid workers is the distinction between agendas. Part of a corporate agenda is mandating someone at your company do X,Y and Z. Even if they want to do the work, they are not volunteering to do it - there is no altruism involved, although enlightened self interest (both on behalf of the corp and the individual) certainly isn't beyond the pale.

The question you seem to be posing in a roundabout way is why are individuals considered volunteers while corporate employees not so considered?

The corporate agenda, as everyone here well knows, is to make a profit. By contributing to open source projects, they hope to make more money than if they did not do so. In no way does this fit the spirit of the word "volunteer". In fact, if that were the case, every company is "volunteering" the time of their employees to produce the goods and services they sell. Not only is this wrong, but it cheapens the use of the word.

Re:Define "volunteer."

[xappax]

Most everyone working on the kernel has an agenda and that's okay -- open source isn't about communism or pure philanthropy, it's more of a libertarian or anarchocapitalist philosophy.

Lots of geeks are anarchocapitalists, so it makes sense that they'd want to claim the successful and popular open source movement as their own, but I don't think they're as similar as you assert.

Anarcho-capitalism is about profit and individual property as the central pillars of society. Open source is not about profit, and it's definitely not about private property.

Open source is a tradition that was established to fight back against those who sought to profit from proprietary computer code. It was introduced as a way to foster cooperation and support between those programmers who didn't seek to profit from their code, but did want to share it with other like-minded people. Open source has become so successful that entire profit-making industries have come to depend on it, but at its core Open Source is designed as a sort of "non-profit cooperative" for people who code for free. Open source is a gift economy - sure everyone gives gifts for different reasons, but they're still gifts.

The open source philosophy is also clearly against private property. Of course, the only form of property that open source involves is intellectual property, which many anarcho-capitalists claim is a special case, but I think the point should still be made that nobody owns open source code, and nobody can own it. Since private ownership of everything is a central tenet of anarcho-capitalism I can't see where the similarity is.

I know socialism is a bad word on Slashdot, because it means red commie soviets who are going to take away all our civil rights and make us live like in 1984, but personally, I see the open source movement as an example of voluntary socialism, or anarcho-socialism - programmers have decided that the existing market forces are abusing their property rights to producing crap software for ridiculous prices. So, they have voluntarily formed a network which allows them to share their resources in a non-market environment.

The reason open source software is so good is precisely because it's not driven by profit-oriented market forces, but by the diverse motivations and interests of many people and organizations. Obviously they're not doing it out of pure generosity, but in general when people develop open source code they're considering how to make good code primarily, not how to make lots of profit primarily.

Re:Define "volunteer."

[grcumb]

I know socialism is a bad word on Slashdot, because it means red commie soviets who are going to take away all our civil rights and make us live like in 1984...

This disdain seems especially ironic these days, now that the capitalist West is proving that it can produce gulags and a 1984 surveillance society much more efficiently than the those nasty old Soviets. 8^)

...but personally, I see the open source movement as an example of voluntary socialism, or anarcho-socialism - programmers have decided that the existing market forces are abusing their property rights to producing crap software for ridiculous prices. So, they have voluntarily formed a network which allows them to share their resources in a non-market environment.

There is one thing missing from the picture. Before you can call it a socialist system, you'd need to demonstrate that a command economy is possible. It is in certain projects, but not in any consistent way. I think the term we might be searching for is 'communalism' - that is, a form of self-organising collectivism that is found in most small villages.

Anarchy doesn't really come into it as much as some might think. Once involved in a community, people often develop very strong obligations and commitment, which makes it hard to float about in the FOSS world and participate arbitrarily. Likewise, there are often barriers to entry in many development communities. You can't just toss a patch into the main trunk without having first established your credibility and, often enough, having demonstrated your commitment to the ongoing development of the project. This kind of moral suasion isn't contradictory to anarchism, but it encourages something different.

This, interestingly, is why I think that FOSS in the developing world doesn't need to be 'explained' (i.e. defended) the way it usually does in North America and Western Europe. FOSS' organising principles are self-evident in many parts of the world.

Re:Define "volunteer."

[stephanruby]

"[Open source] was introduced as a way to foster cooperation and support between those programmers who didn't seek to profit from their code, but did want to share it with other like-minded people."

I'm sure open source was introduced for many different reasons, sometimes even conflicting reasons, but for me open source means that I can profit from my labor, my reputation, my tacit understanding of the code, etc. That is what I get when I invest my time and my money into open source.

And to me at least, the actual code is only an artifact, it may be valuable, but it is not the only valuable part of my work, nor is it necessarily the *most* valuable part of my work. So open source (for me) is/was a pricing decision -- it is/was a pricing decision that holds/held the most promise in terms of profit (considering my situation and the type of market I was in at the time). Also, open source was the easiest way for me to profit from my work since I didn't have the resources, nor the knowledge, to seriously productize my code any other way.

Just thought I'd add my 0.2

Re:Define "volunteer."

[TekPolitik]

Before you can call it a socialist system, you'd need to demonstrate that a command economy is possible.

Socialism, properly so called, does not involve a command economy. Read up a little on Marx and Engels' positions (particularly Engels) and you'll find they actually claim that once socialism is correctly implemented and entrenched the State will wither away because it will have no purpose - that there will be no reason to have an all-encompassing power to make rules for people. Stated that simply it sounds absurd, but the reasoning is quite complex and it would be a mistake to conclude from this brief summary that it's a load of BS - read some of their work and then some of more recent jurisprudential scholars and then you can conclude (if you still think so) that it's BS.

Real socialists actually do look at the open source movement and say "see, this is what we have been talking about the whole time, it can work." One of Australia's most prominent socialists has said this to me in so many words. Nobody is forcing open source developers to do what they do, but open source does closely model what Marx and Engels believed would eventually happen to society as a whole.

Re:Define "volunteer."

[Anonymous Coward]

There in lies the crux of state communism. People can opt out of opensource development if they want to. Under state communism, you are assigned to build a tractor/car/grow wheat, and if you don't like it tough.

People really don't like being forced to cooperate, and with opensource (and small opt-in communes/religous monasteries), they aren't.

Funding...

[Needs Food Badly]

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?

Quite a paradox

[L. VeGas]

...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?

GPL vs. BSD

[ThePhilips]

Overall, the picture is of a broad-based and well-supported development community.

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.

Re:GPL vs. BSD

[Sancho]

Why can't you merge changes back to BSD-licensed code? A BSD-licensed driver which makes it into the kernel is probably going to stay BSD-licensed, isn't it? Wouldn't that mean that changes to that driver could remain BSD?

If someone's been taking BSD-licensed code and changing the license to GPL when it goes into the kernel tree, that's kinda lousy, in my opinion.

Re:GPL vs. BSD

[Anonymous Coward]

Why can't you merge changes back to BSD-licensed code?

Because when Microsoft makes ftp.exe using BSD-licensed code, all they have to do is tell people that it had BSD-licensed code, not give them the code nor the changes they made. Or, take a look at the various commercial forks of postgres that add replication, live backups, or whatever. Sure, it'd be nice if they gave these features back to the postgresql database server, but the developers chose the BSD license knowing that the people who do stuff with the code don't have to give back.

This is why the GPL makes code Free, while the BSD license makes programmers Free.

Re:GPL vs. BSD

[jimicus]

Why can't you merge changes back to BSD-licensed code?

Nothing. But if I merge changes into a piece of BSD-licensed code, there's nothing to stop my competitor 20 miles down the road downloading this piece of code complete with my changes, making a few minor tweaks to it, keeping those tweaks private and selling it - even though I provided a lot of the code which his product is based on.

With the GPL, he can still make tweaks to it but he's got to make those tweaks freely available to anyone he distributes code to. Many choose to simply submit these tweaks as patches upstream rather than maintain their own fork of the software - not really a lot of point in being that anal when the license explicity allows your customer to do that anyway.

What we're seeing happening now - particularly in the embedded space - is that manufacturers are taking the free stuff in Linux, tweaking the kernel and submitting changes where necessary but keeping the majority of their proprietary code logically separate in userland so they don't have to GPL it. Hence why you can have a router based on Linux which is technically open source, but the clever stuff (eg. removing the complication from configuring iptables with a web app, a means of holding firewall rules and some glue to turn these into iptables commands) remains private.

Re:GPL vs. BSD

[Anonymous Coward]

So they will gladly take any change anybody makes to the application under GPL, but they will license that bunch of code out to anybody who pays *them*. The people who extend and improve MySQL with GPL code don't see a dime, while MySQL makes a nice profit.

This is not strictly true. It would be a violation of copyright law for TrollTech or MySQL AB to take GPL code written by other people and release it under a different license without permission. Therefore, they can't "gladly take any change anyone makes". The law doesn't permit it.

I don't know how Trolltech handle this, but MySQL AB only takes changes where the contributor has specifically, deliberately, explictly, and knowingly signed over their copyright to the company with the deliberate goal of permitting them to profit from it.

Don't like it? You can make any change you like to the program under the GPL, and not sign away your rights - and the company can't touch your changes.

IMHO that isn't really the coolest behavior, which is why I avoid Qt and MySQL.

Well, it's your loss if your ignorance is leading you to mistakenly avoid some decent software.

(Unless you actually take the position that people shouldn't be allowed to knowingly and deliberately choose to sign away their copyright - in which case you might like to give some thought to the meaning of the word "freedom".)

Re:Interesting how much was conributed by paid dev

[tomstdenis]

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

Project Maintainers don't write much code...

[jZnat]

At this point, Linus is the head maintainer of Linux 2.6, so the majority of the work he does is accepting patches, arguing in the mailing lists, and talking with the other main programmers and "sub-maintainers" (I don't know if they get a special name or anything).

He doesn't need to write code for the kernel to be important at this point. Besides, he contributes code to other things like git (an SCM) and GNOME.

No Real Surprises

[giminy]

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?

Re:No Real Surprises

[SL Baur]

I'm guessing that either a lot of IBM folk were in the "unknown" categories, or that lots of IBM work is now going into stuff other than just the kernel I would guess the latter. When I was employed Linux kernel hacking for NEC we were mainly supporting kernel debugging tools and not making patches and the largest group of people we were working with was an IBM group in India.

Re:Fairly Interesting Overview

[LWATCDR]

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.

Re:Interesting how much was conributed by paid dev

[morgan_greywolf]

RedHat, Novell and IBM all have dedicated staffs that do nothing but work on the Linux kernel. These are the only companies I know of for sure, but they are also at the top of those contributor lists.

I find it intriguing ...

[LaughingCoder]

... that "corporate America" takes so much bashing on /., and Linux (which is deified in these same boards) is so dependent on those same evil capitalist entities for its very survival. This brings to mind the old catch-phrase "biting the hand that feeds you", doesn't it?

Re:I find it intriguing ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it intriguing that "corporate America" takes so much bashing on /.,...

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).

This brings to mind the old catch-phrase "biting the hand that feeds you", doesn't it?

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?

Re:I find it intriguing ...

[Lord Ender]

I find it intriguing ... that "corporate America" takes so much bashing on /., and Linux (which is deified in these same boards) is so dependent on those same evil capitalist entities for its very survival

This may surprise you (intrigue you?), but Slashdot is not one person with one set of opinions. Even the editors do not collectively form one person. If they did, though, that person would probably have to wear a helmet at all times, and would constantly have drool running down its handi-capable face.

Re:I find it intriguing ...

[Daishiman]

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.

What's wrong with 'I'?

[mooingyak]

Your poster did not like the author's odd reluctance to use the word "I".

Re:BDFL

[JensenDied]

where does open source mean unpaid?

Re:Secretlab?

[gEvil (beta)]

That's certainly a very information-packed page. Thanks for the link.

Re:Secretlab?

[diggory]

Of course they don't - it's a secret.

Broadcom

[oliverthered]

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

Interesting idea, but hardly accurate

[Critical Facilities]

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.

Considering that webhosts are still on 2.4.....

[midnighttoadstool]

It seems they got paid for what they were asked to do.

Re:Fairly Interesting Overview

[LWATCDR]

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.

Re:Fairly Interesting Overview

[mbrod]

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.

Re:BDFL

[FuzzyDaddy]

BDFL is the term used to describe Guido Van Rossum, the creator of Python. He maintains control over what does and does not go into the Python language.

Linus takes a different approach, and has said that the releases are "Linus's tree", and if you are unhappy with it, you are welcome to release your own! His approach is a little less tightly controlled than that of BDFL.

Re:BDFL

[Anonymous Coward]

Comrade! You can pile into the Microsoft paddywagon and go off to Vista Gulag if you prefer!

Re:Fairly Interesting Overview

[HomelessInLaJolla]

I didn't realise how much of the code was contributed by companies Reading the changelogs, and the files in the source Documentation directory, on a semi-regular basis provides enlightening insight into the diversity and number of people who regularly make contributions to the Linux kernel. It truly is a sign of the success of GNU/FSF mindset.

I was fairly suprised to see broadcom had donated so much code Many companies have different motivations for donating code. Sometimes a company may donate alpha code in the interest of testing its applicability and integratability. Sometimes a company may donate old code in order to appease a market which sufficiently supports profit margin, indirectly, through use and advertising. Sometimes a company may even donate commercial code for PR or because the open source community holds the largest population percentage of people who will likely work with it.

Corporations are not all bad and neither are they all good. Every move is carefully planned and executed based upon a number of considerations--some of which may even be at odds against each other. Knowing how to appeal to the greatest number of consumers in the greatest number of market sectors is usually a sign of a company which is agile and successful.

Re:BDFL

[the_womble]

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

Re:oh noes....

[skoaldipper]

Call me a number crunching freak, but I personally found this the most interesting aspect of the article:

Jeff Garzik comes out on top of this particular measurement by virtue of having deleted the long-unmaintained floppy tape subsystem.

garnishing a 6% slice of "shovel and shuck duty" for that one, and then couple that metric with the one following showing Jeff atop the leaderboard with 12.4% for "most lines removed". That tells me this guy is blood and guts knee deep in the trenches. After porting a legacy system to linux for the Navy myself some time ago, I gotta give mad props to this guy. I feel your pain and salute you! Of course, I'm still standing at attention for all the other devs too.

This is the DARKEST secret!!!

[erroneus]

...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...

The analysis is broken

[EmbeddedJanitor]

These are only the submitters, not necessarily the actual authors of the changes.

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.

Re:The analysis is broken

[turpie]

That's what the Signed Off tags are for. So that they can tell who actually wrote the patch and who reviewed it and passed it upstream.

Re:The analysis is broken

[bfields]

"These are only the submitters, not necessarily the actual authors of the changes." No, he looked at *both*. And reviewing patches, providing feedback, resolving conflicts, deciding what's ready when, etc., is difficult and valuable work.

Re:BDFL

[Fordiman]

"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.

Is Linux a male only domain?

[treval]

I couldn't help noticing that there don't appear to be any female names in TFA.

Is the IT industry really so gender biased? And would Linux be better (less geeky perhaps) if more females were involved?

Re:Is Linux a male only domain?

[jsiren]

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.

Re:Secretlab?

[gcl]

Hehehe. No, we do embedded Linux projects. Nothing specifically security related.

Regarding ftape

[k8to]

At least I hope it didn't get removed just because the driver was "old" and "buggy"...

It got removed because it was old, buggy, and no one cared. Quite a number of kernel releases went by (6 I believe?) during which ftape never worked. No one wrote in to say this mattered. No one stepped up to fix the subsystem. The users (you included) apparently were completely silent on the matter.

Granted you might not have installed a new linux kernel in the past 6 months (or more?), or might not have actually used your tape writer in the same interval, so might not have been a position to notice the situation. But the fact that no one cared enough to raise the issue spoke volumes. And so it was axed.

I'm sure if someone steps up to the plate and says "I want to forward port the ftapd driver to the current kernel release and continue to maintain it" and provides patches, that they will be accepted. If that hardware is truly valuable to you, please do seek to let the world know.

Most ftape devices are not useful to most people by now, because they are too slow, too unreliable, and too small capacity. Other larger faster formats have become available, and alternatives to tape have become available such that the aging ftape devices are not interesting to most people. Add to this that tape isn't a very good archival format and you quickly see the dwindling market for such devices. But the 2.4 kernel is still maintained. Ftape works there, I believe, so you can continue to back up your data with Linux.