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Drive-By Contributors to the Linux Kernel

Posted by timothy on from the what-are-the-gang-signs-to-safely-employ dept.

eldavojohn writes "There's an interesting post over at the Kernel Trap that focuses on a man's attempt to find out how many one-time contributors Linux averages per release. Although imperfect due to some obvious unavoidable flaws, he got a few dirty numbers of 'never seen from agains' in the commits from patches 2.6.11 through 2.6.25 and the numbers are: {63, 148, 128, 92, 96, 122, 137, 140, 135, 95, 136, 153, 179, 179, 304}. This makes sense as another reader, Greg KH, pointed out that the distribution curve is tilted towards one-hit contributions, 'the distribution of all of our users are: 50% only contributed 1 patch; 25% contributed 2; 12% contributed 3; 6% contributed 4 and so on ...'"

3 of 61 comments (clear)

  1. Drive-by by Rydia · · Score: 4, Interesting

    My own confusion as to the meaning of "drive by" in this context did make me wonder about ease of contribution.

    What if there were a bifurcation or distribution of the bug-fixing/feature-adding problem? This may be really stupid, but I imagine a situation where testers go through finding things that are wrong or where they go wrong, then submit that bit of code.

    On top of this, there is a system which grabs the trace and shows the bit of code where everything got derailed, and in other panes the stuff it called to, so anybody could look over the "offending" code, without having to be intimately familiar with the kernel or the library or whatever, since it is all laid out for them. Then, people can tinker with the code and submit them for (automatic, since you know what to look for) testing, maybe leave comments on the ticket to help others' or as a group try to figure it out.

    I don't have time to wade through mountains of kernel code looking for bugs, but I would be more than willing to look over a (relatively) small bit of code in a collaborative fashion to see if I pick up on something others had missed.

  2. I'm one! by Kev+Vance · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Nice to see my name in 2.6.25 :)

    I submitted a workaround for a buggy USB device a few months ago, which was my first patch after using linux for more than 10 years. Usually when I find a problem in the kernel it's either already been fixed in a later version, or it looks too complicated for me to risk wasting my time on. I would bet that a lot of my one-off colleagues have had the same experience.

    --
    F0 07 C7 C8
  3. How many contributed 0 patches? by Gavin+Scott · · Score: 4, Interesting

    'the distribution of all of our users are: 50% only contributed 1 patch; 25% contributed 2; 12% contributed 3; 6% contributed 4 and so on ...'"
    Ah, but how many people wanted or attempted to contribute a patch but the process was either too complex or the powers that be just couldn't be convinced of the patch's value and so it didn't make it in?

    I think that would be a very interesting statistic.

    G.