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Fedora 9 Would Cost $10.8B To Build From Scratch
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Thu Oct 23, 2008 09:02 AM
from the that's-a-lot-of-hats dept.
from the that's-a-lot-of-hats dept.
ruphus13 writes "The Linux Foundation's recently released report claims, '... it would take approximately $10.8 billion to build the Linux community distribution Fedora 9 in today's dollars with today's software development costs.' The article states why this might actually understate the value of the distros, though, since it doesn't include the power of the brand and the goodwill value. 'There were several approaches that the Linux Foundation employed to reach the $10.8 billion dollar figure, including calculating the number of lines of code in Fedora 9 (204,500,946), and using an average programmer's salary of $75,662.08 — as determined by the US Department of Labor — to measure development costs ... On the balance sheets of Coca Cola and many other huge corporations, you find goodwill listed as a major asset.'"
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Oh yeah? Guess what Microsoft can do! (Score:3, Funny)
They can spend twice that much money and only deliver a tenth of the functionality! That's a win! I think.
Uh, Goofy Accounting (Score:5, Informative)
Goodwill only shows up on the balance sheet when an acquisition or some similar event occurs which creates a discrepancy between the purchase amount and the balance sheet of the acquisition.
You don't just make up a number and add it onto your balance sheet.
Re:Uh, Goofy Accounting (Score:5, Funny)
You don't just make up a number and add it onto your balance sheet.
And THAT is why I failed my economics class. My teacher never did appreciate my 'creativity'. I would simply explain that I wanted to be a CEO someday.
Parent
Re:Uh, Goofy Accounting (Score:5, Funny)
You don't just make up a number and add it onto your balance sheet.
And THAT is why I failed my economics class. My teacher never did appreciate my 'creativity'. I would simply explain that I wanted to be a CEO someday.
Economics does not use Balance Sheets, that would be your Accounting course. Perhaps that is why you failed?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You don't just make up a number and add it onto your balance sheet.
And THAT is why I failed my economics class. My teacher never did appreciate my 'creativity'. I would simply explain that I wanted to be a CEO someday.
Economics does not use Balance Sheets, that would be your Accounting course. Perhaps that is why you failed?
His teacher failed him because his improper application of the wrong tools in the wrong field could lead him to politics.
What is a trademark's value called? (Score:2)
Goodwill only shows up on the balance sheet when an acquisition or some similar event occurs which creates a discrepancy between the purchase amount and the balance sheet of the acquisition.
If "goodwill" is not the right word for the value of intangible assets such as trademarks, what is?
Re: (Score:2)
If "goodwill" is not the right word for the value of intangible assets such as trademarks, what is?
Start by picking some word that doesn't already have a specific alternate meaning in the same context.
Re:What is a trademark's value called? (Score:4, Informative)
"Goodwill" is a specific subset of "intangible assets". Other items such as patents, copyrights, trademarks or other contractually transferable rights or privileges would be in the same category, but are not "goodwill", which has a specific meaning in accounting.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What is a trademark's value called? (Score:5, Informative)
Uh, Goodwill is the correct term.
Has GP looked at GE's balance sheet? [ge.com]
GE claims $4.5 billion in "Licenses, Patents, and Trademarks". While the GP is correct that these values primarily arise as a function of acquisitions or sale of assets, the only time that corporate evaluations really matter is during acquisitions, sale of assets, and other forms of stock/ownership valuations.
Let me put it the way GE puts it (and GE is the *gold standard* when it comes to Goodwill, except for perhaps the Federal Reserve, who has a totally invented balance sheet.) There are 9 companies with triple A credit ratings, and GE's ability to manage accurately manage goodwill is one of the reasons it is a triple A rated company.
Upon closing an acquisition, we estimate the fair values of assets and liabilities acquired and consolidate the acquisition as quickly as possible. Given the time it takes to obtain pertinent information to finalize the acquired companyâ(TM)s balance sheet, then to adjust the acquired companyâ(TM)s accounting policies, procedures, books and records to our standards, it is often several quarters before we are able to finalize those initial fair value estimates. Accordingly, it is not uncommon for our initial estimates to be subsequently revised.
Emphasis added for the benefit of readers.
You *do* just stick those things on your balance sheet; the issue is being able to justify them. If I put my good name on a financial statement to a bank, the bank probably won't take me seriously, unless my name is something like "Warren Buffet". If my name is "GE", and I "give" that name to some business effort, it is a very serious transaction with serious financial consequences, and I can potentially use that to either buy or sell assets, as well as finance offers, and issue debt.
The credibility of the "good will", and the managers who evaluate the relevant values is what determines the financial values of those intangibles. They're only intangible in that they are intellectual concepts, and in many ways are just as "real" as stock or other corporate paper holdings.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
You don't just make up a number and add it onto your balance sheet.
But you just said that you do!
Re: (Score:2)
True it should not be used on an accounting sheet but Goodwill is defiantly something to be considered when setting the buying or selling price of a company. Why do you think it was Lenovo wanted so badly to keep the thinkpad brand name when the took it over from IBM?
Paying programmers by lines of code... (Score:5, Insightful)
...is like paying airplane manufacturers by weight.
Erm! (Score:5, Funny)
[...]to build the Linux community distribution Fedora 9 in today's dollars[...]
I'd rather build it in C with a modest compiler.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
And it would crash, hard, every couple of years and you would need the federal government to reboot it. Not a good idea. Go with the C compliler.
I'd rather see... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I'd rather see... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Wow, goodwill is an asset? (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder if I can spend some of my karma down at Taco Bell for a burrito?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wow, goodwill is an asset? (Score:5, Funny)
No, but when you die you will be reborn at Taco Bell *as* a burrito.
That's karma!
Parent
How much money did MS spend on Vista? (Score:4, Funny)
According to an Inquirer article, the estimates were about $10 billion [theinquirer.net].
I would think it would cost more than $10.8 billion to develop FC9 from scratch then...since it's a better OS.
Re: (Score:2)
At last! We finally live in the days when money throwing money at a project can magically make the results better!
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Only $427.33 on eLance (Score:5, Insightful)
I bet if you put the specs on eLance, there'd be a company in Romania somewhere bidding to do it for about $427.33, give or take a few dollars :)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Well C is the most spoken language in Romania. ;)
Lines =! quality =! true cost (Score:5, Insightful)
Thats not a fair comparisons of cost.
Especially since you are comparing lines of code in OSS to lines of code in CSS, Its like comparing 2 fruits, they are close, but not the same.
Imagine... (Score:3, Insightful)
Ten billion for an operating system... am I the only one thinking that the money we spend on military adventures and bailing out Wall Street would be better spent funding the creation and development of open source software?
Re:Imagine... (Score:5, Insightful)
The last time I checked, you couldn't stop a suicide bomber by throwing a copy of Fedora 9 at them.
Parent
Re:Imagine... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
But it wouldn't (Score:3, Insightful)
The number's a lot bigger than it needs to be.
Re:But it wouldn't (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure you would have "re-written" things.
Windows has/had 3 major competiting brands of office
productivity software.
Perhaps it wouldn't have all be developed by the same
company, but the products themselves would have been
developed. This just highlights the fact that a Linux
distro is no so much just an analog for a copy of
Windows but it also includes a freeware/commercial
equivalent of a Simtel or Tucows archive DVD.
This also exposes the real problem of competing with
Windows or MS-DOS if you are an alternative OS. You
not only have to compete with the core OS you also
have to compete with all of the 3rd party apps.
I'd be curious what the proposed dollar value of the
entire Ubuntu software repository "multiverse" would
be.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Which existed *long* before Linux was a twinkle in Linus' eye - as did many of the tools used to create Linux (like GCC, and other GNU utilities).
Not to troll, but if Linux wasn't around, we wouldn't build it from scratch, we'd simply use something else - like BSD, which was also here before Linux.
"Good will" does not mean what you think it means (Score:3, Insightful)
> On the balance sheets of Coca Cola and many other huge corporations, you find goodwill
> listed as a major asset.
"Good will" is a specialized accounting term when used on balance sheets.
Salary (Score:3, Insightful)
When reading this, I couldn't help but wish _I_ got paid that much money. The figure I get from sloccount ($55K) seems high, but this is even higher than that! Anybody want to make me an offer?
In all seriousness (Score:3, Insightful)
real cost? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Average salary? (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps you should consider working on something other than an open source project :)
Parent
Re:Average salary? (Score:4, Interesting)
You make $3.78/hr ?
Where I live people who make $75k have to live in an apartment, and it is unlikely they will be approved for a home loan without at least 30% down (around $150k). If you save aggressively on that sort of salary it should only take about 5-7 years to scrap together enough money for your down payment. Once you have the house, I'm not sure how you pay the mortgage (roughly $3k/month).
For you it will take closer to 70 years.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Buy a smaller house or condo. 30% down? Usually its 20%. The housing in your area sounds a tad overpriced to me or your example is just another case of living beyond one's means.
Lastly, home purchasing in the US is priced for couples, not individuals.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
As I wander around San Francisco, I see people living in some pretty squalid housing. I think to myself, "that's a 2 million dollar property? How? And how does that guy manage it?"
I get the impression that there might be affordable housing in San Francisco, though not the really desirable kind of housing that goes for $1000 per square foot.
I could be wrong, but then, the market still bears ridiculous pricing. It means you either need equity in the market, or it means that enough people have enough incom
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I'm gonna have to call "shenanigans" on your $$ figures there. According to this [trulia.com] it would appear there are plenty of homes one could buy that are FAR less than your supposed $625K "median" price.
That's the wrong point to make. Half of the homes (give or take half of a house) would be under the "median price", in either case. Unlike the mean, how far some go above or below it doesn't affect it. If the prices were $5, $5, $5, $60000, $80000, $80000, and $85000, $60000 would be the median.
You do appear to be correct about his first figure (the "bad place in the Bay" being wrong, though.
A total of 7,271 new and resale houses and condominiums sold last month in the nine-county region, marking a 0.5 percent uptick from August. The median sales price fell 36 percent from a year earlier to a five-year low of $400,000, MDA DataQuick said.
$400,000 / .64 = 625,000. It did "hit" 625K, evidently, but certainly isn't there any more.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
No necessarily to the parent, but the GP, there are places in the US where you can live very comfortable on $50-$75k per year. Mostly smaller towns 100-150 miles from major metropolitan areas. I'm thinking Chicago's Rockford, or Elgin. Or any of the various industrialized suburbs of Milwaukee, or Brookfield, WI, or similar towns.
Take out an FHA loan on a cheap property, something that needs a lot of love, and put in the work yourself (that way you *know* the value will go up; it's not appreciating, its swea
Re:Average salary? (Score:5, Funny)
In America, homeownership, like college, is a capitalist trap designed to force you into lifelong slavery. Fuck the house, own your life.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If I had a nickle for every time I heard a geek claim Aspergers, I'd have roughly 500 cents.
"A comprehensive assessment involves a multidisciplinary team that observes across multiple settings, and includes neurological and genetic assessment as well as tests for cognition, psychomotor function, verbal and nonverbal strengths and weaknesses, style of learning, and skills for independent living." .. I'm not saying this was not done for you specifically. But generally when I hear someone claiming this, it is
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's also quite easy to do a 90 day trial for a job to evaluate performance. Many places do this and something similar. An acquaintance of mine started out working at Google as a contract worker - he works for the company for a limited amount of time (a year, I believe), and then they evaluate him at the conclusion of that time period and see if they want to bring him on board.
He now proudly sports his @google.com e-mail as he's a full-time employee. He's working for a good company and Google knows they hav
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Otherwise whatever corporation would have created it for 10.8B would have needed to sell it to nearly 200 million people at 50 bucks a pop to have broken even. Most likely they would have folded.
What a ridiculous sum pulled completely out of thin air.
Well its a good initial number. If you would like to refine, go ahead. Yes there are problems with the number. It doesn't take into account the lines of code thrown away, or that you should probably rate lines of code for different programs at different salary levels.
Even using this approach for the Windows code base would have problems. Just the fact that the code was developed over a period of time and subsets were present in older versions of the code. Also, the cost to rewrite it all from scrap might be
Re: (Score:2)
One more pun like that and they'll never find where you were beret'd.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You forget all the other parts of a major project. Analyze, design, test. Those take people and hours away from simply pounding out lines of code.