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The Myth of the Isolated Kernel Hacker
Ant writes "The Linux Foundation's report (PDF) on who writes Linux — "... Linux isn't written by lonely nerds hiding out in their parents' basements. It's written by people working for major companies — many of them businesses that you probably don't associate with Linux.
To be exact, while 18.2% of Linux is written by people who aren't working for a company, and 7.6% is created by programmers who don't give a company affiliation, everything else is written by someone who's getting paid to create Linux. From top to bottom, of the companies that have contributed more than 1% of the current Linux kernel, the list looks like this: ..."
Captain Benjamin Willard was not a myth!
Capitalism: When it uses the carrot, it's called democracy. When it uses the stick, it's called fascism.
and i thought IBM and Red Hat just took the code and didn't give their changes back to everyone else
Here's the list: 1. Red Hat: 12.3% 2. IBM: 7.6% 3. Novell: 7.6% 4. Intel: 5.3% 5. Independent consultant: 2.5% 6. Oracle: 2.4% 7. Linux Foundation: 1.6% 8. SGI 1.6% 9. Parallels 1.3% 10. Renesas Technology: 1.3% 11. Academia: 1.2% 12. Fujitsu: 1.1% 13. MontaVista: 1.1% 14. MIPS Technologies: 1.1% 15. Analog Devices: 1.0% 16. HP: 1.0%
Linux isn't written by lonely nerds hiding out in their parents' basements
Of course! There's the lonely nerds hiding out in their parents' attics as well. More light, less ground water.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Yes, Canonical. It is nowhere to be seen in contributions to the linux kernel. Why won't the biggest name in desktop linux, which is funded by a millionaire, doesn't contribute to the linux kernel?
At 18.2%, individuals are still the largest single group contributing to Linux. The next is RedHat at 12.3%.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Doesn't this article make the real lonely nerds in their parents basements even more lonely?
It is nice to see how things have developed and know who should be given credit for much of the work. I look forward to such a list and stats being made available dynamically on each release ongoing.
but.. but... but... where's SCO?
I hope this finally kills off the "GPL is bad for business" myth. Every one of those companies is paying for work on the kernel because it is good for their business. Red Hat, IBM, Novell, etc. aren't charities - they sponsor Linux development because it expands their markets and brings in profits.
This is a problem that won't go away easily. This image is perpetuated every day by stupid people that for some reason hate open source.
The funny fact is that the same people that say that Linux or any other open source software is created by lonely nerds, at the same time see nothing wrong with wikipedia, tvtropes, blogs, twitter, facebook, etc.
So, the bottom line is: if a software is is created by individuals, it is a huge pile of crap done by lonely nerds that have nothing better to do in life. Anything else is actually a great experience that shows how powerful individual contributions are, and how they can change the world.
Reminds me of PBS...
This Linux Kernel was brought to you by the continued support of USERS LIKE YOU.*
* And support from Red Hat, IBM, and Novell.
This is a piss-poor way to determine corporate sponsorship, especially the first one. Because someone works on the kernel and uses his work email address, it does not follow that the employer sponsored his work.
The third one is also dependent on the question asked. The question is not listed and the answer to "Are you employed at a company for the specific purpose of developing for the Linux Kernel" is almost guaranteed to be different than the question combination of "Where are you employed?" and "Have you ever done any Linux kernel development at work?"
The proper people to ask about corporation sponsorship of Linux kernel development is HR and PA, not the employees.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
If you sum up the figures given in the article, it only accounts for 75.9% of the contributions. I am going to speculate that this missing quarter is contributed by many who contribute infrequently. IE, IT staff in companies that use Linux and find the occasional bug and submit a patch to correct it. If this speculation is correct, the largest group that contributes is 'Everyone Else'.
Slashdot is an anagram for Has Dolts, and I am Dolt number 468543
I haven't been keeping up with linux development all that much lately, but as I was looking at some of the graphs in the report, I started to become curious as to what the data might represent. For instance, the graph showing lines of code Added, Deleted, or Modified in the 2.6.x kernels. Did something get a massive re-write in 2.6.27?
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
I don't even know if MS Project can export to HTML so that the others in the teams DON'T need to install it.
Where I work, the MS Project overview is printed. Apparently, that is the easiest way to convey the information to others.
The point is that Linux would simply not exist except for the efforts of non-paid developers. The same cannot be said of Red Hat, IBM et al.
Oh that is just great!
Our main method of communication is e-mail, and now I have to either PRINT it or send screenshots!
Thank you for the info.
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
For the longest time, it seems like major business have collaborated in one of several ways:
But with Linux, it seems like a new model of collaboration for companies. It's mostly a meritocracy where a company's stature cannot get a bad or only-self-serving idea pushed into the end result. But because of that discipline, the final product is so compelling that companies want/need to participate anyway.
Am I right?
It pays for companies using Linux to contribute to the development. The long term savings of using Linux massively outweighs the small contribution of programming resources. And those contributing to development get to address the technical issues on top of their priority list. You can't get that kind of service out of Microsoft.
We're quickly approaching the time when an operating system is more like a utility than a product. A commodity delivery mechanism for business services. The potential for Linux, very quickly approaching realization, is that it can provide a unified stack from a mainframe down to embedded systems. That type of efficiency is very powerful economically. I'm sure MSFT can swim against that tide a long time but, eventually, efficiency will win.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Surprised that Google is not in the list, as they have been big supporters and enablers of linux and the Chrome OS is going to be (quite) a new Linux distro.
Just because someone gets a check from a company, doesn't mean they're not lonely nerds hiding in their mother's basement :-)
Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...
What we see here is that a small number of companies is responsible for a large portion of the total changes to the kernel. But there is a "long tail" of companies (500 of which do not appear in the above list) which have made significant changes.
Yup. The top 50 contributors (including groups for "none" and "unknown") add up to about 81.5%, meaning that those other 500 companies, added together, yield 18.5% of the code--more than any other single group.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Free software is about freedom, not about community busybodies telling companies how they should give back. If you're a company who can take free software, respect the licenses, and make a bajillion dollars off of it, then great! That's part of what freedom is about.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
Here's a hint: your comment should have been posted in your slashdot journal, where at least six people will see it, as they will be notified that you have written a journal. The when you make an on-topic interesting, informative, or funny comment that is modded up, your comment will have a link to your journals by your username.
Some folks just copy their homepage entries to their journals. Slashdotters are more likely to click your journal than your homepage.
Free Martian Whores!
Now to blow it up
Linux isn't written by lonely nerds hiding out in their parents' basements. It's written by people working for major companies...who just happen to also be nerds and like to be close to mom.
His comment is right on target.
From the report, it appears only men substantially contribute to kernel development. Yes, I have used listed names to come to my conclusion. Where are the women? Or am I wrong?
The kernel used to be only developed by lonely nerds, long before IBM got interested in Linux, before RedHat existed, etc. Though, you have to consider a lot of those lonely nerds got jobs at these companies, so really it is still written by lonely nerds.
MS Project can export to a useless read-only, single large .jpg type of html.
You could buy Collabnet's TeamForge and sync your Project plans (both ways) with a web tracker/management/etc app.
I'm sure there are online, OSS, apps that do roughly he same job.
However, at my company, the MS project plan is not shown to anyone other than the project managers, that's the easiest way to convey the information; and as developers, just the way we like it :)
So, unknown "others" are still major contributors.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
This is a problem that won't go away easily. This image is perpetuated every day by stupid people that for some reason hate open source.
OpenOffice.org has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Sun.
You see a lot of that in FOSS - but it has always been something the geek has chosen to underplay.
It strips away many of his own most deeply cherished myths - and none is more deeply cherished than that of The Cowboy, The Lone Gunman.
You just gave me the best laugh I've had in a while.
Thank you.
Pretty please ??
I'm trying to figure this out. Is this meant to assure businesses that Linux isn't dependent on a bunch of "lonely hackers", so they'll be more comfortable bringing it into their IT department? Or is it a response to the sorts of people that seem to turn their noses up in disdain whenever the idea of corporate involvement in Linux is brought up (Slashdot users, you know who you are)?
Or maybe it's just a public "outing" to point out, by omission, who's not "giving back to the community" sufficiently (in the eyes of the Linux Foundation)?
#DeleteChrome
The Linux kernel ought to be done by now, and stable.
Drivers, file systems, and networks ought not to be in the kernel. That's a big part of the problem.
Real microkernels like QNX don't change much. USB and FireWire support were added without kernel mods, for example.
Yes, microkernels require extra copying. But copying is cheap on modern CPUs, as long as what's being copied was accessed recently and is in cache. Fear of copying cost dates from older CPU architectures, where instruction cycles mattered more than cache footprint.
I'm a little surprised to see that Cannonical isn't on this list. Redhat, sure, but Cannonical has a huge marketshare.
Canonical doesn't do much if any kernel work, they use Debian. As an earlier poster said Canonical focuses on userland programming.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
To me, it wouldn't make since for Apple, a company selling a commercial OS based on FreeBSD, to pay people to work on a different kernel.
While Apple doesn't use and contribute to the Linux kernel, they use and contribute to the khtml engine, it's used in Safari.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
In a way, I can sort of see Microsoft at least tentatively embracing Linux if that was the way the wind was blowing. However, I would be truly gobsmacked if Apple did, given their corporate culture which is even less inclusive than Microsoft's.
Actually Apple supports FOSS and individual Apple employees help at least some with Linux. I just wish they could help with an issue I have with Eclipse. When I try to use it in a user account I get an error, I went to 2 different Apple stores and asked a Genus at the bar if they could help me and both said company policy didn't allow it. They said I had to check in the online discussion forums.
Here's some Apple links to FOSS downloads. Among them are the native Mac port of Open Office NeoOffice, PHP, Apache, and Open Office 3.1.
Falcon
BTW I checked both the forums and googled the error but didn't find a solution.
Should there be a Law?
The author himself deserves the title of Captain Obvious. It's not like this is the first report on who contributes to the kernel that was released by the Linux Foundation...
Apple has "Mac vs PC", Microsoft has "Laptop Hunters", Linux has recession
Ya got yours !!
And keep in mind Google has Android, which will be the first success of "Linux" on the .. off the server.
.. have to go ahead and disagree with you on this one. - Did Redhat / IBM / Oracle / etc.. write the Linux kernel? No. - Did Redhat / IBM / Oracle / etc.. write the source code for 'cp, rm, mv, iostat, vmstat, bash, ksh, csh, etc..' ? No. - Did Redhat / IBM / Oracle / etc.. write gcc? No. This article should have said, "Who writes Linux applications and packages them along with the Linux OS".
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Created with Adobe InDesign CS4.
And there's plenty drivers living in userland missing. For example anything connected by USB, the kernel can do raw read/write to all USB devices but without a driver to know where and what to write that won't do any good. A linux issue yes, but not a kernel issue.
I'm not sure what you mean by this, so excuse me if I'm wrong, but I got a PC with Linux preinstalled and when I plugged in a USB flash drive an icon popped up on my desktop and I was able to use it right away. This was more than 3 years ago.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
they are also passing on a strategical opportunity to help out where it matters a lot.
Where it matters a lot is getting Linux onto the desks of end users, unless you want Linux to remain only as servers and toys for geeks, and Canonical is doing quite well in that regard.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
"Canonical is a commercial, for-profit company that provides engineering and development services, 24x7 support for Ubuntu Linux, training, hardware certification and application packaging."
I don't think canonical has hundreds of millions, i thought they just had a few million.
The Ubuntu project and Canonical was started by the South African Mark Shuttleworth who spent millions of dollars to fly to the Space Station on a Russian Rocket as a cosmonaut.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
"Survey shows open source developers mostly veteran pros, not slashdot weenies. Slashdot weenie Hemos should have submitted this himself already seeing as he was involved in it as LinuxWorld! Open source a needed outlet for programming pros."
http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/02/05/201259&mode=nested&threshold=3
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'Humanity to others', or 'I am what I am because of who we all are'. The Ubuntu distribution brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the software world.
http://www.ubuntu.com/products/whatisubuntu
check nagaiah portfolio to buy or sell financial assets in bombay stock exchange
Want to make a profit? None of the above.
Redhat makes a profit. IBM makes a profit.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Since a non-OS can't compete with Windows.