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Novell Rises to Second Highest Linux Contributor
eldavojohn writes "Which companies contribute the most to the Linux kernel? Well, The Linux Foundation released their results and Novell's contributions have gone up 250% (from 3.6% of all contributions to 14.4% of all contributions) to put them at #2 behind Red Hat. This chart also illustrates just how widely Linux is modified by the community and not just a handful of developers/companies. You can find more coverage on blogs and the original report."
I am reminded of the $350 Million that Microsoft paid Novell last year and must wonder if the 200% increase in sales that Novell reports can be linked to that?
I also must wonder if Novell's only intent is to stay a key part of Linux to maintain this Microsoft partnership?
Or if Microsoft is urging them to become an even bigger player so that Microsoft can feel like and threaten people that Microsoft owns even more of the Linux kernel, not just the vague patent threats? One of the articles mentions this notion of not 'owning the source code' but rather 'owning the source of the code.' Could this be Microsoft's new target?
Then there's the super fun idea that Novell is putting in source code from Windows that Windows "accidentally" gave Novell which does several things at once. It justifies Novell's payment for protection from Microsoft litigation, it hobbles their competitors in the Linux realm and it gives Microsoft the power to go after any user or company using Linux with the 'stolen' code. It would also tie up Linux for a bit until that mess was sorted out.
I mean, since Novell's already demonstrated they're Microsoft's bitch and admitted it what is preventing any of the above whacked out theories from being true?
My work here is dung.
that this F/OSS stuff is actually working... that would just ruin everything. If this keeps up where will it stop? Baseball players playing for the love of the game? Backyard engineers reporting on bad levees? Damnit, this will ruin everything.
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Inspires confidence, no?
--10scjed IANAL,AFAIK
That's funny, I don't see Microsoft on that list anywhere...
-- Alastair
I see a lot of posts here treating Novell with suspicion (maybe even well-deserved) about their contributions. For my part, however, I would like to thank Novell as one of the many users directly benefiting from their support. It's no good to vilify Novell, then demand that the support open source, and decry them when they do. If it turns out later that there was something foul going on, then we can go back to vilification. For now, though, they have done well and helped us all out. Hence, once again, thank you, Novell.
#define DRM chmod 000
Good, bad..they're the ones with the code.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
for instance, here's a statement with no basis in fact, and based on pure distrust and speculation:
Then there's the super fun idea that Novell is putting in source code from Windows that Windows "accidentally" gave Novell
Pure paranoia only serves to hurt everyone, and doesn't help anyone (except maybe Microsoft).
These arguments are starting to sound like a "who's the alien shape shifter?" speech by the guy who's lost it in your average bad sci-fi show.
AccountKiller
Where is Canonical on that list? Or rather, are they represented there at all? I would think that at the very least they would get money from Dell to fix a few things. Slashdotters often like to bash RedHat for shedding their free desktop division, but the love for Canonical seems endless.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
My work here is dung.
Or do they keep all their advances to themselves?
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
It is not surprising that the two are connected, nor is it neccessary, but it should be applauded when such a correlation appears. If we look at Ubuntu/Canonical for instance, by your standards, they should be pretty high on the list, right? In fact, they do not even appear on this list. Even Mandriva makes an appearance at 0.4%. Note that I do not know if Debian or Ubuntu developers fall into the Other or Unknown categories, but Debian exists as an organization and Canonical is a company, so I would expect them to be represented somehow, at least a footnote, if their contributions were of a sufficient size to make this list. I do not expect that every distro should employ kernel hackers. Ubuntu is more focused on user experience than kernel level features. So they do play a key role in the development of Linux as a complete operating system. My point here is that distributing a popular distro does not mean you develop a proportional share of the Linux kernel, or any linux software. Luckily, open source software enables and encourages such contributions back to the community. So don't say, "Well, given their size and profits, Novell should be doing that", instead say, "Kudos to Novell for giving back proportionaly to their success".
That is totally true but even because of the GPL you are not forced to accept any GPL code either. If there is a specific patch in the Linux kernel you don't want to have you can remove it for your own builds. This is one of the big benefits of GPL code. You are free to take it or free to leave it. Even if Novel is being nefarious, Linus and the other kernel hackers miss it, you are under no obligation to agree to use their GPL code.
Interesting. Is this still the case today?
Of course, this is immaterial to the subject at hand; in general, X drivers are implemented in userspace rather than the kernel. Did they also develop kernel drivers frequently?
Frankly, I would love to see statistics from the Linux Foundation on Linux contributions going back a decade or so. Also, I would definitely love a breakdown of the kernel sections to which each company contributed. My guess is that these days, many of those piddly 0.3-0.7% contributions are from hardware manufacturers supporting their own hardware. The large software company contributions are probably more feature and performance oriented, like schedulers, virtual machines, etc.
Number one is some company called "none", followed by "unknown" and Red Hat is 3rd
I'd just like to point out with some minor amusement that for those RMS followers who love to prepend "GNU/" to the front of the Linux OS's name, this is one case in which it's inappropriate no matter which side of that fence you fall. We're talking about Linux kernel contributions.
E pluribus unum
Yes, you are correct; my mistake. The fact that these were exclusively kernel contributions was momentarily lost on me.
Its worth noting, however, that the Linux kernel as it stands simply doesn't work with any compiler other than GCC. Have you every read the kernel source code? Fully 20% of the damn thing is GCC-specific preprocessor directives (I might be exaggerating a bit). I think that at one point, there was an effort to make it compile with the Intel compiler (which, performance-wise, it much superior to GCC), but I haven't heard about it since; I'm sure that it failed. Either way, Linux, even the kernel itself, wouldn't exist without the foundation provided by GNU packages. I have no interested in referring to the kernel itself with the "GNU/Linux" moniker, but I just find it interesting how important the GNU platform really is.
The top two "contributors" on the list are "None" (13.9%) and "Unknown" (12.9%).
Regarding the former, I think it is very much worth noting, more than Novell's increased contributions, that so much is still being done by independent contributors. As for the latter, what exactly does that mean? How can we not know where changes come from. That's a bit disconcerting.
I think it's kind of a shame that Novell is doing so poorly. They actually had *negative* income in 2007, and are still largely making their money from selling *netware* despite all their Linux investments.
A lot of the stuff they are working on is pretty cool, especially Mono.
However, I think it's clear that there just isn't room in the market place for another distro.
These arguments are starting to sound like a "who's the alien shape shifter?" speech by the guy who's lost it in your average bad sci-fi show.
Yeah, and it's usually the first guy to ask that question who turns out to be the alien... waitaminute...
OMG, eldavojohn is submitting Windows code to the Linux kernel! Burn him!
The enemies of Democracy are
Interesting...so what you're saying is that paying developers produces more usable code for the kernel? But I thought we were supposed to hate these companies that profiteer off our beloved egalitarian operating system.
If you can't find a real troll, just mod down whoever you don't agree with!
What exactly does Novell have that you actually want to run on Ubuntu?
Yast2 has been GPL'd, same for the Apparmor stuff which Ubuntu now USES in fact.
I'm not entirely sure what your point is, most of the stuff Novell releases is GPL'd or otherwise open sourced.
May have been true once, but it hasn't been for a long time. I recall seeing news about using Intel's compiler to build a Linux kernel years ago. More recently, Rob Landley's been doing some work with tinycc to get it up to snuff for kernel compiles, with the goal of generating a system that can "...completely rebuild itself, under itself, without any gnu code on the hard drive."
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
I'm not certain that this is a bad thing. Not certain. It might be a good thing. Perhaps.
OTOH, it makes me more interested in OpenSolaris, and it makes me wish the Hurd people would stop starting over from scratch. It also makes me more interested in BSD, even though I prefer the GPL.
Sun has talked about releasing OpenSolaris under GPL3. If they do, I'm going to be VERY interested.
If Linux were under GPL3, I wouldn't be worried about Novell. It isn't. The language of the GPL is equivocal in terms of what it means WRT patents. I think it means that if you can't distribute something legally and allow those who receive it to also distribute it, then you don't have the right to distribute it. Unfortunately, it's not totally clear about this. It was written before software could be patented, and it certainly didn't contemplate patents like a patent on adding 2 + 2 in Basic. (That particular one is harmless...but it's a magnificent example of the kind of foolish stuff that's allowed to be patented.) So the writing of the GPL frequently used general terms. Terms which apply with equal force to trademarks, copyrights, and patents, even though all are very distinct in their limitations and powers. As a result, it allows patents to be used in most places that it allows trademarks to be used. UGH!!! A sensible interpretation of the GPL would, indeed, mean that the GPL3 was unnecessary. I don't feel like I can count on the courts coming to a sensible interpretation in any reasonable amount of time.
So I trust GPL3 code coming from Novell. Other code...leaves me hesitant.
This is sort of like how I feel about Mono. I'm not certain it's booby-trapped, but I can't tell, so I'd rather avoid it. I'm risk averse. I know it. I've always been risk averse. To me, trusting Novell looks like excessive risk. I *hope* their code is being thoroughly vetted by those who know better than I do what's dangerous. I fear it isn't.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Check out Greg KH's blog:
"To be fair to one company, Google, we were incorrectly counting their representation, keeping Andrew Morton in the "Linux Foundation" bucket instead of the "Google" bucket. That will change the list of top companies placing Google somewhere between 10 and 13, I haven't re-run the numbers yet to get the exact placement."
Another big portion is companies like Novell contract themselves to other companies to do their kernel development for them. AMD, for example, pays Novell to do their kernel work for them. This isn't an uncommon practice, since RedHat also gets money from other companies to do their development work in the kernel. But when it comes down to it, the actual "originator" of the code or concept may not be Novell or RedHat, but they're the email address getting merged on the Signed-off-by: lines, which isn't a big deal.
I don't see this as anything evil or underhanded, being a network stack hacker myself. The kernel maintainers and core contributers are far from stupid and gullible, and will *not* accept anything if they see proprietary undertones. I'm also sure they're putting a bit more scrutiny into reviewing patches from Novell just because. But the bottom line is more people are working on the kernel, trying to make it better, which is the end-goal. It really, in my mind, doesn't matter who is doing it, just as long as it's getting done and done well.