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Torvalds: "People Who Start Writing Kernel Code Get Hired Really Quickly"
alphadogg writes Now more than ever, the development of the Linux kernel is a matter for the professionals, as unpaid volunteer contributions to the project reached their lowest recorded levels in the latest "Who Writes Linux" report, which was released today. According to the report, which is compiled by the Linux Foundation, just 11.8% of kernel development last year was done by unpaid volunteers – a 19% downturn from the 2012 figure of 14.6%. The foundation says that the downward trend in volunteer contributions has been present for years. According to Linus Torvalds, the shift towards paid developers hasn’t changed much about kernel development on its own. “I think one reason it hasn't changed things all that much is that it's not so much unpaid volunteers are going away as people who start writing kernel code get hired really quickly,” he said.
You can handle a little verbal abuse?! Welcome aboard!
Most linux users don't know this, but the man pages were named after Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris fsck'ing hates noobs!
I would like to contribute to the kernel, but seriously I don't have the time and I don't think I'm alone. And the kernel is also a big project. Almost every time I run into a bug or something that I could fix, some engineer at Intel or something has already fixed it and it's not merged yet. It's not that people that write kernel code gets hired, it's that now you more or less have to be hired in order to write kernel code. Yeah I know you don't have to, but it's not 1998 anymore and anyone can write kernel code just for the fun of it.
...as so many people develop for it in order to pad their CV.
I can think of at least one friend who made contributions with that intention, before abandoning his work.
Bloaty bloaty bloat bloat.
I guess the low hanging fruit has been picked, so the drop is no surprise
Many years ago I worked on several parts of the kernel. But I got hired by a start-up and simply had no time, so I had to step away.
But I still fondly remember meeting all of the people involved. When I was doing things, I don't recall Linus being verbally abusive. Maybe it happened and I don't remember.
People who are qualified to modify or create code for the Linux kernel are going to be pretty damn good coders. If they weren't, well they wouldn't be contributing for long. So basically this is saying unpaid, good coders find jobs quickly because companies are completely fucking stupid.
As Linus makes clear, there is no decrease in non-paid contributions. They are a smaller percentage becasue more professionals are now being paid to develop Linux. That is a good sign becasue it means more businesses see Linux development as something worth investing in. And it's probably the same people doing the programming. Previously they would have to do it for free but now they get paid. Nothing wrong with that.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
I frequently work with people who are terrified to touch anything related to kernel. Many are "professional" Linux-developers, but to them, all they know is user-space code.
I am the go-to guy with anything kernel related at my work, as I'm not only not afraid of the kernel, but I embrace the opportunity to dig deeper. I've learned that this is a rare and valuable skill in some technology circles. People seem to regard me as some kind of wizard (because I maintain tool chains and do all the integration stuff and similar). I did not exactly actively seek this position. The only real difference is that I've never been afraid to learn. Now I'm quickly becoming the in-house expert and I don't care. I can leverage that to death when looking for other jobs.
Community developers write useful things then get hired by the WMF to work on stuff nobody wants.
So wait, I guess not like MediaWiki.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Despite 2015 not being the year of Linux on the Desktop, it IS the year of Linux in just about every embedded device, board and SOC on the market. This means that there are more developers being paid to work on Linux, presumably including the Linux kernel.
The summary is full of percentages. 11.8% seems to be about 19% less than 14.6% but that just serves to obfuscate. I'm not willing to dig into the "fill-in-the-form-to-read" article, but would assume that the total number of paid developers has increased accounting for the change in percentages.
The generation that grew up during the open source times are way past of their school years, and they either broke or has to make a living. New kids aren't interested.
As a person with software development skills, I could:
1) spend time writing kernel code, and get a sense of fulfillment from it.
2) spend time writing some other code, and get a sense of fulfillment from it, and get paid too!
3) Play WoW.
The incentives speak for themselves.
Linus comment is out of context, I hope.
Getting hired really quickly changes nothing. You are still an unpaid volunteer unless the new job pays you to contribute to the kernel. Lots of people contribute to open source projects on their own time while drawing income from other work. That does not make them paid developers in the context of the open source project.
I'm a senior in CS, I haven't taken operating systems. I've never seen the code for a kernel and don't know what's involved. However, everything I've seen heard or read about kernel programming sounds painful and difficult.
I think this is the problem. Maybe kernel writers do get snapped up fast... but it feels like there is an extreme lack of approachability and perhaps lack of information on what's involved. Add to that the lack of approachability of open source in general ... and it's no wonder that they have no volunteers. (oh and torvald's temper)
Why does the Linux Foundation force its website visitors to submit a form before they can read this report?
First Name
Last Name
Email
Company
Job Title
Really? Why can't we have a regular download link or at the very least a 'skip this' option?
Disappointing. Now I'm sad. :(
I look back on many years of writing assembly code for 680x0 and PPC, Strong knowledge in Hardware and System development of certain architectures as well as C programming. I even have written an hobbyist Kernel and an Action Replay like software (WinIce for Windows guys). Sadly I am not able to find a job offer here in germany. Most of the time I deal with mid management people who know shite about programming at all. They see you as a toy who can be hired cheaply.
Over the years I found a company named CSC (Computer Sciences Corporation) who hired me as an application developer for surface and subsurface realtime systems (Military services). At least that's what's written on the paper. The reality ended up that I did normal consultancy shite like building up PC's, lot of travelling, systems integrations and other things NOT RELATED to my job description. After 6 years I quit the job because it wasn't satisfying. I wanted to leave earlier but unfortunately the current economic situation didn't allow me to quit the job and become unemployed.
After a while they started treating me with all kind of dirty company stuff like warnings and other things only to enforce me to continue the way "they" saw me. This ended up in me resigning from the job.
After that I wasn't able to find another job anymore because over the 6 years I did so many different tasks, that I ended up doing everything half or on a broad ranger rather than staying the expert that I was before I joined the company.
Now 5 years have passed where I resigned from my job and from then on depend on germans wellfare system.
I wasn't hired anymore. No one want's my knowledge and no one wants to hire a "foreigner" (my parents are migrants).
So far mr. Linus Torvalds. I respect you but you are wrong. The indepth skills one have are worth nothing. The only thing matters is a) you are young, b) you are cheap and c) you are no fucking migrant.
New kids aren't interested because they think "code" is Java and Objective C and application/GUI code and think that the rest is all "hardware". Many aspiring coders don't even realize that there is more complex code under the hood which makes everything easy for them. They take this stuff for granted as if it happens by magic and have no concept that someone actually wrote their OS and frameworks in C or C++.
These people are very easy to identify as they'll be the idiots spewing things like "no one programs in C anymore".
See my anon comment above about people fearing kernel code.
You sir, are one of them. It's a psychological barrier, not a technical one. It really, really isn't hard to get a start on kernel development, especially if you're only talking about things like simple mods and drivers. If you're the type who needs an IDE to get anything done, then yes, it probably is hard, but you're also not a skilled programmer.
As far as documentation goes, to me it's duplicate effort and introduces risk of out-of-date docs. The code and headers should be all you need. Docs are for non-technical managers who like feature lists.
The only important docs are how to configure and compile a kernel, and that's documented to death and rarely changes.
People just think it's hard and won't even try.
Maybe it's the "CS" title. I am more familiar with the engineering world.
And where is the Dice link ?
Why do they do this? On the one hand, they may have some profitable use for the Linux kernel, but on the other hand, Linux is GPL'ed, so they are effectively giving away the work to the world at large. That may be fine for Joe Average volunteer kernel developer, but why would a company want to contribute to a public project like so?
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
I do think it's important to get working but I'd say some of these kernel devs just stopped for other reason - like increased taxes and a need to work more for actual money..
...some of real world cases are much messier than Linux.... google for spaggeti :)
Plus, OS kernels are not that complicated... that's the whole point, after all.
Too bad typical app developers have very little clue of how kernels work.
practically no one hires kernel programmers, linux took care of that.
- former kernel programmer
Can someone please point me to the statistics for total devs in each of the years between 2012-14. More importantly, did the numbers stay the same, increase, or decrease? This would signify the true aspects of the downturn as specified in the article if it were made more transparent.
While I look at other code for the details, such as looking at a function I plan to call, some "big picture" documentation is extremely valuable in order to know where to start. It's best to understand how it's supposed to all fit together and you can't see that by looking at individual lines of code in a codebase of millions of lines.
Also a sample HelloWorld module is very useful. What functions are REQUIRED for a kernel module? Reading over an existing module won't answer that; a sample helloword.so will answer that and many more in a compact form.
I found the Apache Modules book very useful for these reasons. The functions in the Apache API can be understood, but the big picture of the architecture is much clearer after reading the book.
Here's where he posted it... personally I think it's hysterical and am not at all offended. :)
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!msg/fa.linux.kernel/Dd6OHskaUPI/dsGFoZCO_woJ
Nice try Torvalds. If that were the case, you wouldn't have to bring it up the subject as an enticement.
The supposed fact that kernel developers are knee deep in job offers would encourage enough people to undertake the self training.
However that does not appear to be the case....here Torvalds (and the community also does this) lures neophytes into supplying
YEARS of FREE expertise and labor in the (false) hopes of finally being welcomed into some secret inner circle
of six figure open source development jobs. Alas, the few such jobs are already taken, and there really isn't any demand for
commecial linux development that isn't being met already (between the few closed shops and the glut of freely supplied labor that is
given in false hopes of "going pro").
Insidious, isn't it???