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75% of Linux Code Now Written By Paid Developers
i_want_you_to_throw_ writes "During a presentation at Linux.conf.au 2010 in Wellington, LWN.net founder and kernel contributor Jonathan Corbet offered an analysis of the code contributed to the Linux kernel between December 24 2008 and January 10 2010. The Linux world makes much of its community roots, but when it comes to developing the kernel of the operating system, it's less a case of 'volunteers ahoy!' and more a case of 'where's my pay?'"
It's not clear from the article why anyone should perceive a contradiction between having high ideals and getting paid to do something you enjoy.
What's wrong with that?
Except you're not the first, because that question is mentioned at the end of the summary.
How many paid kernel developers does microsoft have ? How many does Sun have ? I can't find any straight numbers on the web.
A thought strikes me, though. It seems unlikely to be more than a few dozen each, at most.
Lines of code written for money are evil and execute more slowly.
The Linux world makes much of its community roots, but when it comes to developing the kernel of the operating system, it's less a case of 'volunteers ahoy!' and more a case of 'where's my pay?'
Since when does community == volunteers?
That large, well funded corporations are now contributing members of the linux community is a Good Thing.
Ask Slashdot: Where bad ideas meet poor googling skills.
There seems to be some assumption that "community" means "unpaid". Not at all. The Free Software community includes a whole lot of people who get paid to use software to meet the needs of employers. If meeting those needs involves improving bits of Free Software, the employer benefits from having those contributions integrated into the product.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
How much does a line of code cost?
Cost-per-line is a patently bad way to compute the worth of code or value of a coder. Knowing what to code is more important then just writing the code. Features implemented or bugs fixed is probably a better measure.
"Maybe this world is another planet's hell"
Aldous Huxley
Kinda defensive, aren't you? Who said anything was wrong with it?
The article itself basically presents the facts, but it does mention that it's interesting that a bunch of companies that otherwise compete with each other are in fact cooperating to develop Linux.
...it's less a case of 'volunteers ahoy!' and more a case of 'where's my pay?'"
I'd say its more a case of "I get paid to do this? who-hoo".
As part of my job, I port Linux to our embedded boards and occasionally hack a driver or two.
However, in order not to scream out to our competitors "Hey! We're making a new product!", the small amounts of code I send pack at patches (it's a pain in are done so though a nondescript gmail account.
I suspect this practice is fairly widespread. Therefore, I'd say that 75% is an under-estimate.
Except of course, they aren't. They are being paid. Contrary to your post, Open Source Developers are being mainstreamed and getting paid to do it. You mistake "volunteer" for "open source". Volunteer developers are being marginalized, but Open Source Developers are gaining ground all the time.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
"Remember, these people are getting paid for their labor, not paid a million times over, every time a copy of the code is distributed."
Now only if we could apply this concept to the music industry.
You can. Go to your favorite bands next concert.
What percentage of these paid developers work for a company that derives its revenue primarily from software development?
I disagree. Volunteer aren't being marginalized at all because most of the paid developers were at one point doing it for free. It's a sign Linux is maturing since now there are businesses willing to hire developers to add and maintain the features the care about.
Volunteers are still welcome but if they get well known for doing what they do then they are likely to get a job offer or two.
Why should someone feel guilty about being paid for their efforts? Business is a not a bad thing in itself, as people who work do need to be compensated, that is unless if they are independantly wealthy.
I have no issue whatsoever with a developer being compensated for their time, nor does it even raise an eyebrow for me.
I think the ethical standard here is that Linux is open source. That is open for peer review, open for other developers to work further on the ideas and ideals. Too often do people confuse this sort of "free" with the other sort: Mana from heaven.
Yes, you can download and install a linux copy for absolutely free, but thankfully, there is money to be made outside of just getting copies of bits and bytes to a PC. I do not think that there is anything wrong with that at all, and good on the highly intelligent and skilled developers of Linux saying "Where's my paycheck?"
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
So who decided that the Open Source movement was about *not* making money? I thought it was about enlightened self-interest. If we make the source of today's apps available to the coders of tomorrow, everyone wins. Up-and-comers get a chance to see real-world (and sometimes, cutting-edge) code - and the community (of software developers) gets new devs who show up already knowing some of the things *we* had to figure out the hard way.
The new guys get the benefit of our experience and in ten years, we get to hire better new guys.
Any plan which depends on a fundamental change in human behavior is doomed from the start.
Value for money, my friend. My Windows and my Linux machines have, lets be honest, a relatively similar number of problems. Windows suffers from the most outright bugs, but then Linux can still sometimes throw a hardware or compatibility wobbly, and sometimes does suffer the occasional deeper problem.
The difference is that one of them is distributed free over the internet, and the other cost me £150 and still delights in harassing how "genuine" I am every time I visit the developer's website.
You tend to be far more forgiving when something is both free (beer) and, feels like it belongs to you instead of some distant oligarchy.
Free as in price and use. Since there are many many businesses that benefit greatly from Linux why is it so surprising that such businesses would pay to develop it further?
If Linux wants to sit at the adults' table -- and it clearly has the depth and breadth of functionality to do so -- then there needs to be the kind of professional accountability in its developers that only a paycheck can engender.
Billions lost on failed UK IT projects by the 'adults' with developers receiving very fat paycheques shows it guarantees neither success of the project nor accountability within it.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
So, exactly how much are you paying for the Linux you rely on for your business?
$699. I thought everyone paid this.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
6/10. Moderately good troll, but don't try to be all things to all people.
You can make a good case pointing out that this has happened millions of times before, and you can make a good case that cell phones are making a laughingstock of OSS, but trying both makes you seem confusing.
If you want an AC's advice, focus on the cell phone angle. Keep saying that Android & OS X are based on FOSS but go beyond their base in ways that the open source community never could. Try to blur the line between hardware and software (Apple, Apple, Nexus One, Apple!) and say that because you can't have a computer without hardware, which is propietary, there is no such thing as a good open source computer.
And then blur it all into websites. Google is a company and a lot of FOSS people use Google, therefore they are hypocrites and can't handle living in the world they push on everyone else. Then focus back on cell phones. Go for the 'the average user doesn't care about FOSS' angle - they hate that - and demand a 100% free piece of hardware to run a 100% free OS. If you somehow get a bite by someone who interprets 'free' as 'unlocked' then talk about how they paid five times the price and switch your argument to support - again, cite Google as proprietary.
I hope to hear from you again! Good luck!
And if we wait another 100 years, then 100% of Linux code will be written by historians. That's the power of statistics.
What the hell are you talking about? Historians are people that study the past, not lived in the past.
Linux is a mature project, amounts of code written today have a minuscule impact on the overall project compared with amounts of code written in the late 90s.
Linux kernel 2.2.19 (2001): 1.8M SLOC
Linux kernel 2.6.32 (2009): 12.6M SLOC
Nothing to see here. Linux is as much a volunteer project as it has ever been.
So if something was started by volunteers, it'll always be a volunteer project even though those writing code are no longer volunteers? Or did you not RTFHeadline?
Sometimes slashdot really could use a "-1, Nonsense" moderation...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Linux is the adults table. The adults all sit at it. You've heard of Google, IBM, Sun, Oracle, Novell?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
The big advantage of commercial software is that the sales revenue allows you to pay people to write it. It should come as no surprise that people LIKE being paid for working. If developers are being paid, the money doesn't just magically appear. Somebody, somewhere is paying for it. Intel, Oracle, etc. get their revenue for selling other kinds of stuff to people, stuff that they paid somebody to make, write or whatever. The revenue can then be invested in other projects of which support for linux is merely one.
Another advantage is that if you pay people to do something, you can hold them accountable for their work and hence increase productivity.
In the end the fact remains: there's no such thing as a free lunch.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
I use linux professionally. So does most of the web. We're "forced" to GPL any improvements we have to make in the process of getting the job done. "Forced" is in quotes because fair is fair - so did everyone else including those bat**** crazy people following Linus and Sallman who wrote the seeds that grew into this and frankly I feel I'm getting more then I could ever give (at best correcting the occasional bug). GPL is there so it's clear to the managers that if you have a problem with that, feel free to pay quite handsomely. It's cheaper to improve linux (and/or the rest of GNU) then it is to not use it. Epic score - that was the whole point all along, right?
It's more about SAVING money. Linux is free, so they don't have to pay royalties. And in comparison to server OS costs to those companies listed, what's the relative value of programmer salaries?
I'm guessing not a whole lot...
Ah, those would be the bands which only visit our country once every five years?
Yes, I know I should be supporting local bands who nobody has ever heard of who play genres like 'mathgazer shoerock', but my hipster card got revoked.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
I've installed countless ubuntu systems on people with little technical expertise that don't understand why they have 10 browser tool bars in their IE install and wonder why their computers run like shit.
In that case, wouldn't the easier solution be to install firefox on windows?
Don't get me wrong - I like Ubuntu despite the problems I've been having with Linux in general (they really need to get ATI support working properly). I also love the free-software ideal. But, realistically, there's no performance difference between Ubuntu and Windows XP or windows 7. The only problems people have with MS operating systems is that they keep voluntarily installing all sorts of crapware which slows down their machines. If 90% of users switched over to Ubuntu, don't you think that sooner or later they'd start having the same problems?
When you say that, you omitted all developers working for Intel, AMD, ATI, nVidia, 3com, Boradcom, ... that work on drivers. I would not be surprised if most of the 4000 developers of Linux knew only a few modules required for development of their favorite device driver.