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Torvalds: "People Who Start Writing Kernel Code Get Hired Really Quickly"

Posted by samzenpus on from the getting-paid dept.

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.

27 of 130 comments (clear)

  1. Upper management be like by tehlinux · · Score: 5, Funny

    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!
    1. Re:Upper management be like by Austerity+Empowers · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Or, people who understand how to write good software and understand actual hardware designs & issues are very valuable. And yeah, if you can tolerate difficult personalities, that's always needed...

    2. Re:Upper management be like by jlockard · · Score: 4, Informative

      If you can handle a LOT of abuse, you're welcome to join the OpenBSD developers.

      Seriously, people whinging about abuse from Linus know nothing about abuse when compared to Theo.

      --
      --JLockard - "Some mornings, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps." - Emo Phillips
    3. Re:Upper management be like by Pseudonym · · Score: 2

      Fifty Shades of Kernel.

      --
      sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
    4. Re:Upper management be like by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I really want a T-shirt that says, "I've been flamed by Theo de Raadt". My one foray into the OpenBSD mailing list resulted in that flame. I can't actually remember what it was about, but Theo was probably right ;-) Honestly, I think the infamy that both Linus and Theo have is a little bit unfair. The flames are real and often are a little bit over the top (sometimes a lot, to comical effect), but I can't really recall very many situations where the actual content of the discussion wasn't carefully considered before the flames were emitted. In fact, the fact that these projects flourish is proof that the flames are not overly counter-productive. In contrast, I remember (many, many years ago) as a newly graduated developer I took an interest in the Hurd. I had done a 4th year project on Mach and thought it would be fun to work on it. It may be hard to believe for younger people, but in those days source code for unreleased projects was not that easy to come by, so I emailed the team to ask if I could participate. I was asked to send a resume, which I dutifully did. The reply that came back was incredibly rude and essentially said, "So you're a nobody. We have absolutely no interest in you. Go away and don't ever bother us again." There is a reason that projects like Linux and OpenBSD succeeded while the Hurd did not. The projects are accommodating and welcoming to new comers. You might get flamed for saying/doing something stupid, but you aren't abused for just trying to help. In fact, it is my opinion that most of the practices that people think of as "free software development" actually originated from the successful way that Linux was developed. Definitely before that time I think it was rare to be able to contribute effectively to a project without knowing someone who knew someone.

      That's one grey-beard's perspective, anyway. Others may have had other experiences.

  2. It's also not that easy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:It's also not that easy by MichaelMacDonald · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's harsh coding. I was going to work on microkernel code once for the HPUX linux port. Just getting familiar with everything is a bit of a project. You have to really want to do it. I love low level coding, too. I, just, always find myself doing other things. That said, finding work is easy enough that I don't need to kernel hack to make money, and I have yet to run into a serious Kernel issue that stops me from doing something I want to do. Honestly, though, these guys doing the kernel hacking are good enough that finding work isn't an issue.

  3. Re:And so Linux has become a boring mess... by by+(1706743) · · Score: 2

    Although, in fairness, adding loads of printk(KERN_WARNING "Hire Dave! He's really qualified!\n"); was a pretty great feature.

  4. I used to contribute.. by toonces33 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:I used to contribute.. by earthminion · · Score: 5, Funny

      @"Linus is only verbally "abusive" when people who should know better screw up." ... and Torvalds:"Writing Kernel Code Get Hired Really Quickly"

      Maybe Linus Torvalds (as a Kernel Coder himself), has got fired and is looking for a job.

  5. There is no problem here. by duckintheface · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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
    1. Re:There is no problem here. by mlts · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It might be something a college student might be able to devote time and effort to. Obviously, it won't pay directly, but after graduating, being able to point to a module in the kernel with one's name on it is a good way to find jobs, since there are a lot of companies that need niche programming needs (good luck getting a H-1B fresh off the boat to make usable, bug-free code for SCADA, life-safety, and limited environmental systems. Even pushing code to FPGA cards is something that takes some work, as you are not going to find a cookie-cutter MCSD who knows Verilog/VHDL.

    2. Re:There is no problem here. by Penguinisto · · Score: 3, Interesting

      There is no decrease since contributions have always been non-paid (from the perspective of the linux foundation). The joke was that as an unemployed developer, one must have a certain irrational fondness for the kernel in order to devote time to it as opposed to actually looking for paid work.

      As sibling mentioned, I suspect that the majority of unpaid contributors (that is, folks who contribute without being paid to do so by an employer) are indeed college students. Hell, Linux itself was originally written when Linus was an unpaid college student (with a strong distaste for Minix, and who could blame the guy), so it's not as if the argument has no merit. Other sources of unpaid contributions would be retired devs who want to keep their brains sharp, or junior devs who get paid to write other stuff, but want to build up their resume without a degree or waiting to get years of experience (because let's face it: a kid whose resume says "I am an active contributor to the Linux Kernel - here's the URL listing my approved commits" is going to get a fuckload of notice by the hiring manager in a Linux/UNIX-oriented dev shop.)

      --
      Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    3. Re:There is no problem here. by Cyberax · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I'm was an H-1B and I came to the US for a salary that put me in the top tax bracket. My job description included development of critical medical systems.

      H1B is simply an employment visa, that could be used for many purposes. There actually are no other options, even for highly qualified professionals (L1 requires corporate relationships, B1-in-lieu-of-H is extremely rare and Green Card processing takes way too much time).

  6. It IS a valuable skill by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:It IS a valuable skill by w_dragon · · Score: 2

      I've done a little kernel work, it's very different from user space. In user space I don't need to know the difference between soft and hard interrupts, and if I keep a mutex locked for a few extra instructions the performance implications aren't as bad as keeping a spinlock too long. That's not to say people shouldn't learn these things, but it makes kernel code look pretty foreign, even for a C developer.

  7. May also show wider adoption... by Art+Challenor · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:May also show wider adoption... by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yep, that wasn't too long ago. Ballmer was, of course, actually talking more about the GPL license and it's "viral" nature, as they viewed it. Microsoft has previously been forced to release source code when GPU code was found in one of it's products.

      Interestingly, it's a very different Microsoft today, having realized that iOS and Android have destroyed them in the mobile space, and with Linux as a very strong competitor in the server market. You see them now even porting some of their most important properties (Office, Outlook, .NET, etc) to competing platforms, which would have seemed unbelievable just six or seven years ago. Competition is a good thing.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    2. Re:May also show wider adoption... by LWATCDR · · Score: 2

      It maybe the year of the Linux Desktop. The thing is that the the distro could end up being ChromeOS.

      --
      See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
    3. Re:May also show wider adoption... by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 2

      Oops, that's "GPL code", not "GPU code", of course.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
  8. Re:And so Linux has become a boring mess... by halivar · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Well, I guess that opens a philosophical discussion of whether writing device drivers counts as "kernel coding" at all.

  9. Unpaid volunteer != unemployed by erice · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  10. Re:And so Linux has become a boring mess... by DarkOx · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So what if it gets pulled into the kernel, than its kernel coding; at least in Linux land because driver code can touch memory belonging to other parts of the the kernel. If we are talking about Minix or something it might not be.

    And So what if he did it to pad his resume. Drivers are useful to anyone who has the kit they are written for. Even if he abandons it quickly a working or mostly working driver is still useful because someone else can maintain it. Its way easier for me take your driver for 3.0.19 and tweak it build on 3.0.22 or whatever than it is to work out the hardware details.

    He wins and the community wins.

    --
    Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
  11. Not in Germany by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Not in Germany by deathguppie · · Score: 2

      How can you say that Linus is wrong, if you haven't worked on the Linux Kernel?

      That is what the statement was about "Linux kernel developers get hired".

      --
      once more into the breach
  12. erm.. really??? by Pax681 · · Score: 2
    Ars has an article about 2000 new developers

    Linux has 2,000 new developers and gets 10,000 patches for each version Linux recently saw "busiest development cycle" in its history.
    The new developers are helping fuel an ever-bigger Linux community, according to the latest Linux Kernel Development report, which will
    be released today by the Linux Foundation. The report is expected to be available at THIS LINK .

  13. Re:Crossroads by NormalVisual · · Score: 2

    And it's free. Option #3 requires that you actually pay to receive the abuse.

    --
    Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas