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First GNOME Census Results

Posted by timothy on from the but-it's-in-the-constitution dept.

supersloshy writes "The GNOME Census, a project to see who contributes to GNOME and how, has released its first set of results. The results group people by their reasons to contribute code, what they contributed code to, and what percentage of the total contributions they have. For example, 23.45% of code contributions were volunteer, 16.3% of code contributions came from Red Hat, 1% of contributions came from Canonical (which has caused a lot of controversy), and 0.24% came from Mozilla Corporation. The census results are also represented in diagrams (release activity, why contributions were made, and what was contributed to and by who). The report is also available here and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license."

3 of 175 comments (clear)

  1. Languages by maxwell+demon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    One interesting observation about the contributions on language bindings: Obviously volunteers are mostly into scripting languages (Python, Perl), while each compiled language is dominated by a single company (C++ by Openismus, Java by Operation dynamics, and C# by Novell).

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  2. Freeloaders = good by Alwin+Henseler · · Score: 5, Interesting

    To claim that Canonical is freeloading on other companies' contributions is a bit of myopic, in my opinion.

    'Freeloading' often has a negative meaning, but in open source land the opposite is true IMHO. Any additional user helps to improve the software just by using it:

    • Increased user base means increased market share, bringing open source software closer to the point where companies take Linux support more serious for their products, governments may take a 2nd look at their open source use & support for open standards, websites are checked more often in alternative (read: non-IE) browsers, etc, etc.
    • More users = more testers, more bug reports etc. This ultimately helps the software quality, if more bugs are found (& hopefully, fixed).
    • More users = (over time) more experienced users, that can help newcomers get started.

    So regardless of who deserves credits, that's many networks effects that benefit all users of such software, Gnome included. Freeriding on that is about as harmful as watching new years' fireworks without lighting any of your own - you still contribute to the party, just by being there. And in that sense, Canonical has done a lot to support Linux - by attracting & supporting many new users.

  3. Check which modules get rejected by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The reason why RedHat's piece of GNOME commits is so big is because they have been rejecting modules developed by competing companies. Novell made a push to get their start menu included in GNOME, it was rejected by the RedHat majority. Same thing with Compiz, a compositing window manager developed by David Reeveman of Novell, also rejected despite it being an almost complete drop in replacement for Metacity which is ancient RedHat technology. He also worked on bringing OpenGL into xorg and had a working prototype for how to do it. Also rejected because RedHat favored a different approach by writing AIGLX. The reason why Novell doesn't have a large stake in GNOME's codebase is certainly not for a lack of trying. There are dozen more modules that have been rejected over the years. What they all have in common is that RedHat employers aren't working on them.

    Then check what modules have had no problem getting included: PulseAudio, Clutter, DeviceKit, Cheese, gnome-user-share... All created by RedHat employers. Basically, when it comes to the core of GNOME's infrastructure, RedHat has been very effective in keeping outsiders out.