Who's Writing Linux These Days?

cold fjord writes "IEEE Spectrum reports, "About once a year, the Linux Foundation analyzes the online repository that holds the source code of the kernel, or core, of the Linux operating system. As well as tracking the increasing complexity of the ever-evolving kernel over a series of releases from versions 3.0 to 3.10, the report also reveals who is contributing code, and the dominant role corporations now play in what began as an all-volunteer project in 1991. While volunteer contributors still represent a plurality among developers, over 80 percent of code is contributed by people who are paid for their work. ""

Comments

Patrons

[jones_supa]

While volunteer contributors still represent a plurality among developers, over 80 percent of code is contributed by people who are paid for their work.

This. I've said it before and will say it again. The open source projects with most bugs and slowest development time are the ones without proper sponsors. That's why I also use a lot of commercial closed-source software myself, but do not have any particular grudge against OSS either. Just pay the developers properly, because complex, properly quality-assured modern software is impossible without that.

Re:Patrons

[RabidReindeer]

While volunteer contributors still represent a plurality among developers, over 80 percent of code is contributed by people who are paid for their work.

This. I've said it before and will say it again. The open source projects with most bugs and slowest development time are the ones without proper sponsors. That's why I also use a lot of commercial closed-source software myself, but do not have any particular grudge against OSS either. Just pay the developers properly, because complex, properly quality-assured modern software is impossible without that.

Before you get too comfortable with that assertion, recall that Linux Torvalds wasn't being paid to develop Linux in the beginning nor for long after. Nor were his earliest assistants.

It's certainly easier to develop good-quality software if you aren't distracted by the need to earn a living doing something else, but it's not essential.

Re:Patrons

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

I don't see how that follows. If you knew that sponsored open source projects were superior in quality to non sponsored open source projects, I don't see how that applies to non open sourced sponsored projects. It might, but its not a logical inference from the previous statement.

Re:Patrons

[JoeMerchant]

There are many paths to not needing to earn a living - while 99% of the world may not have the luxury of "room and board, including broadband, covered without working for a paycheck" - that still leaves tens of millions who do.... now, whether or not these are the people you want developing your OS kernel is another question, but if you throw another 99% filter on them, there may still be thousands of people out there who have the means, ability and disposition to write high quality FOSS, and, thankfully, the internet has given them the means to collaborate.

Re:Patrons

[Drew617]

But... corporations!

Let me explain to you how this works: you see, the corporations finance Linux, and then Linux goes out... and the corporations sit there in their... in their corporation buildings, and... and, and see, they're all corporationy... and they make money.

Re:Patrons

[RabidReindeer]

Before you get too comfortable with that assertion, recall that Linux Torvalds wasn't being paid to develop Linux in the beginning nor for long after. Nor were his earliest assistants.

I'm still mostly comfortable with my assertion. :) I am talking about modern software, which is significantly more complex than early Linux. Indeed, it is the complexity and lines of code which makes it day by day harder to make meaningful software without it being a full-time paid commitment.

I'm pretty sure that if software had gained some sort of magical properties in the last 30 years I'd have noticed it.

Yes, the codebase contains more components than it used to - although having smarter and more standardized hardware has reduced the number of unique drivers. But Torvalds is still "Penguin-in-Chief". He just delegates a lot now since there are more components to ride herd on. And now it's his primary job.

The fact that a lot of the components have full-time professional teams working on them is generally an indication that they can see a benefit from having control over an item on their personal agenda and on their own schedule instead of waiting for someone to come along on their own time and in their own way. Which is natural, since the essential systems were worked out 2 decades ago. Since then, we've seen the addition of virtualization support (in large part created by academic, rather than commercial developers), abstractions in block I/O, new network features and filesystems, clustering and other things that are typically of commercial interest.

Along the way, a lot of these items were originally developed by unpaid developers who then leveraged what they had done into careers for themselves. Even Red Hat itself wasn't a major commercial endeavor at first.

Not to say that IBM and Oracle haven't been major contributors, but Linux has many roots and many parts and they each have their own characteristics.

Re:Patrons

[Anonymous Coward]

Personal opinion, unrelated to my work:

You said:

1) " The open source projects with most bugs and slowest development time are the ones without proper sponsors.

Hum, let's take that at face value, just for the sake of argumentation (I personally don't think so, but let's put that aside for the moment)

2) "That's why I also use a lot of commercial closed-source software myself, but do not have any particular grudge against OSS either."

2 does not follow 1.

Open source with sponsors is better, you say. Closed-source is not an extrapolation of that.

The fact that open source is favoured in many situations where cost is not a factor shows its quality to be superior to that of closed-source -- not the opposite.

While surely people must have a means of living, in my opinion business pressure leads to poorer products -- either by rushing incomplete versions out or simply by design.

I do not have data to back this up other than the massive use of open source in everything.

Re:Patrons

[Tough Love]

The open source projects with most bugs and slowest development time are the ones without proper sponsors.

I know, right? Take Samba for example... oh wait.

Re:Patrons

[http]

No, there isn't a saying.
The tradition in law is that the existence of an exception may be used to infer a rule - e.g. "No Parking: 4pm - 6pm" means that parking IS permitted at other times. Mr. Torvalds may be considered unusual, but his efforts are not part of (or exception to) any rule I can think of, except maybe "being polite and rude consistently gest things done in the long term"

Re:Patrons

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

And London is the Capitol of the UK. What does that have to do with software quality in closed source applications?

Here are a few more random things that have nothing to do with what we are talking about, devoid of any context, in case someone else wants to see them.

Trees are made out of wood.
Bill Clinton didn't found Microsoft.
ARM processors are more common in smartphones than MIPS processors.
Debian supports multiple kernels, not just Liinux.
Last year eneded on Dec 31st, 2013.

Re:Patrons

[icebike]

Before you get too comfortable with that assertion, recall that Linux Torvalds wasn't being paid to develop Linux in the beginning nor for long after. Nor were his earliest assistants.

It's certainly easier to develop good-quality software if you aren't distracted by the need to earn a living doing something else, but it's not essential.

Linux moved very slowly (Glacially) while Linus was working for a living and building linux evenings and weekends. He was still in the University at the time if the initial release in 1991. He graduated in 1996 and took work with Transmeta, (Crusoe) which lasted till 2003. Transmeta gave him wide scope to spend significant time on Linux on the company clock.

From 2003 on, he has been essentially paid, allowed, and encouraged to work on Linux with a free hand.

So he spent 8 years at University (interrupted by a year of military service). How those years were financed is not public knowledge, but I suspect his Parents and the Finnish government played a part.

From graduation in 1997 on, he was on the payroll of companies that had the good sense to let him do pretty much as he wanted.

And that's not unusual. A lot of these early contributors were in the employment of companies that allowed and encouraged them to work on linux. You need only dig through early archives to see the email addresses used.

Re:Patrons

[Anonymous Coward]

Tridge and Jeremy have been working on Samba for twenty years now. Which is a very long time.

I remember hearing a story about how they went to a conference and they were so excited to meet the Microsoft SMB devs and ask them questions. But when they got there they found that the Microsoft devs had only been working there for a couple years so they were still newbies.

And when they asked how many people work on SMB at Microsoft, they realized that the Samba team had more full time professional developers than the Microsoft team.

Re:Patrons

[Pav]

Apparently "glacial" development was still good enough to steal market share from the commercial Unix vendors.

Re:Patrons

[Pav]

Mod up... Part of what is so refreshing about F/OSS is that it's self directed by passionate people. There's something obviously wrong with the premise of the article. If patrons are the real source of vitality in Linux and F/OSS why are the most successful distros clustered around Debian and not Redhat?

Basic functionality of an OS is there

[jfdavis668]

The constant need for change and improvement are generated by companies making software and hardware for Linux. So they are motivated to extend it. There are no longer major pieces of the OS to develop. All that code developed by companies is then reviewed and tested by part timers, who don't get the credit they deserve.

Re:Basic functionality of an OS is there

[Monkey-Man2000]

All that code developed by companies is then reviewed and tested by part timers

[[Citation Needed]] The linked article suggests the opposite and shows that signing off on code submissions is overwhelmingly corporate.

What, you don't browse the Linux repository's weekly commits every Saturday evening like me? People get paid for that?!