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Who's Writing Linux These Days?

Posted by timothy on from the thought-we-were-an-autonomous-collective dept.

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. ""

8 of 63 comments (clear)

  1. Patrons by jones_supa · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Patrons by RabidReindeer · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    2. Re:Patrons by JoeMerchant · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:Patrons by RabidReindeer · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

    4. Re:Patrons by Tough+Love · · Score: 4, Funny

      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.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    5. Re:Patrons by icebike · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

      --
      Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
    6. Re:Patrons by Pav · · Score: 3, Informative

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

  2. Basic functionality of an OS is there by jfdavis668 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.