If I do the math, $10.8 billion dollars divided by 204,500,946 lines of code I get a little under $53 per line of code.
Studies of software development productive frequently come up with a number like 10,000 lines of code per programmer man-year. A recent large project I read about at Cisco, doing system level code, I seem to remember saying more in the 7500 lines of code range per programmer man-year.
If we do the math again, 204,500,946 lines of code divided by 7500 lines per programmer man-year, gives a little over 27,000 man years. If we take the claimed cost, $10.8 billion and divide by 27,000 man years, that gives $400,000 per programmer man-year.
Also for a little reality check, Microsoft's R&D budget is around $8 billion/year now, so Microsoft would have the financial resources to write the equivalent of Fedora 9 every 16 months.
If I do the math, $10.8 billion dollars divided by 204,500,946 lines of code I get a little under $53 per line of code.
Studies of software development productive frequently come up with a number like 10,000 lines of code per programmer man-year. A recent large project I read about at Cisco, doing system level code, I seem to remember saying more in the 7500 lines of code range per programmer man-year.
If we do the math again, 204,500,946 lines of code divided by 7500 lines per programmer man-year, gives a little over 27,000 man years. If we take the claimed cost, $10.8 billion and divide by 27,000 man years, that gives $400,000 per programmer man-year.
Also for a little reality check, Microsoft's R&D budget is around $8 billion/year now, so Microsoft would have the financial resources to write the equivalent of Fedora 9 every 16 months.