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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."
...did neither contribute nor pay?! Strange...
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.
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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?
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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.
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.
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
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.
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.
My blog
where does open source mean unpaid?
09:F9:11:02 - 9D:74:E3:5B - D8:41:56:C5 - 63:56:88:C0
That's certainly a very information-packed page. Thanks for the link.
This guy's the limit!
It's a shame they didn't contribute the firmware for their wireless cards.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
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.
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.
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.
Comrade! You can pile into the Microsoft paddywagon and go off to Vista Gulag if you prefer!
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
...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.