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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. Suggestions for evil? by Henry+V+.009 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There doesn't seem to be a lot of room for a web of trust here. I wonder how hard it would be to inject some sort of extremely non-obvious race condition hidden in a large and useful patch that just so happens to let you execute arbitrary code?

    If you were found out, you could just claim, plausibly, that you hadn't seen the possibility of the race. Or maybe just be a one-time contributor so there is no way to track you down if the hole is discovered.

    1. Re:Suggestions for evil? by Henry+V+.009 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Well, I for one am willing to subvert the entire open source movement this way, but only for the United States government, and only for a great deal of money.

      Representatives of the NSA: if you're reading this, you know who I am and how to get in touch with me. And probably what I'm doing at exactly this moment.

    2. Re:Suggestions for evil? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Representatives of the NSA: if you're reading this, you know who I am and how to get in touch with me. And probably what I'm doing at exactly this moment.
      Yes, we do. And we've got a request: next time you post something that will prompt us to monitor the surveillance cameras in your home, could you please put on some pants first?