How Google Uses Linux 155
postfail writes 'lwn.net coverage of the 2009 Linux Kernel Summit includes a recap of a presentation by Google engineers on how they use Linux. According to the article, a team of 30 Google engineers is rebasing to the mainline kernel every 17 months, presently carrying 1208 patches to 2.6.26 and inserting almost 300,000 lines of code; roughly 25% of those patches are backports of newer features.'
Re:Open source is the coat tails that Google rides (Score:4, Insightful)
you missed the point of open source then
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:5, Insightful)
They are already running absolutely absurd amounts of cheap hardware. "Just buying more" is something that I'm sure they are already doing all the time but clearly that only goes so far.
I suspect the answer to that is a very very small number.
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:5, Insightful)
You are clearly not an engineer of scientist. Aside from the fact that some people just like to solve technical problems, I am betting google's logic goes something like this:
We have a problem that is basically only costing us $0.01*10,000computers/day. While that seems low, we plan on staying in business a long time, we could pay someone to solve the problem. Then there is that X factor, that if you don't do it, if you stop innovating, your competitors will, and they will get more and you will get less from the pool of money that is out there. In addition to that, the CS guy you paid to solve that is now worth more to your company (if you employed him) because [s]he now has a better understanding of a complex bit of code (the linux kernel) that you rely on heavily.
Does Google give coade back (Score:5, Insightful)
Does Google give any code and patches back to the Linux kernel maintainers? Since they probably only use it internally and never distribute anything they are not required to by the GPL, but it would still be the right thing to do.
Re:Low memory conditions (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Open source is the coat tails that Google rides (Score:1, Insightful)
For Free Software, 'take' is fine. 'Provide but restrict' is not.
Re:Open source is the coat tails that Google rides (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:5, Insightful)
That could amount to hundreds of millions of dollars saved over the next decade, and it doesnt take a genius to realize that a couple dozen programmer salaries will be a hell of a lot less than that.
Re:Togh (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah great work Linus.
The distros STILL stick with older versions and backport fixes, because who in their right mind is going to bump a kernel version in the middle of a support cycle? It's even MORE broken because the kernel devs rarely identify security fixes as such, and often don't understand the security implications of a fix, so they don't always get backported as they should.
The Linux dev model is NOT something to be proud of.
Re:Does Google give coade back (Score:2, Insightful)
most of those changes aren't Google-specific
Why would they submit "Google-specific" patches?
It would make sense for them to only submit those patches that they believed to be of general utility. Other stuff would likely not be accepted.
Re:Togh (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh actually I think the form of development used by the BSDs is a lot better. At least it is a lot more efficient. They don't just crap software and deprecate it as soon as it remotely works (hal).
Re:Does Google give coade back (Score:4, Insightful)
If you subtract search engines google is responsible for a a tiny portion of the internet. Andrew gets benies from google so I suppose they do get some credit for the quantity of his work as he needs to eat and pay rent so that he can code.
Are you nuts (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not a huge goog fan, I never take their cookies so I don't use anything but search..but JUST search is way more "give back" than table scraps. If they announced tomorrow their search would now cost x-dollars a year, as long as it was somewhat reasonable,like an extra 5 bucks a month on top of my ISP bill, I'd pay for those table scraps. Google search has done more than anything else to make the web actually *useful* since the invention of the hyperlink.
Sure, there are other search engines, but if you actually learn to *use* the features and filters present wih google's, it just stomps all the others flat.
Whatever they give back in terms of code is just gravy on top of that.
Reminds me of Android (Score:2, Insightful)
Somehow I'm reminded about the whole Android thing. Google really seems to have the urge to only do their own thing. Same thing with android where they have thrown out the whole "Linux" userspace to reinvent the wheel (only not as good, see Harald Welte's Blog for a rant about it). Here it seems the same thing they just do their own thing without merging back and disregarding experiences others might have had.
On a side note, their problems with the Completely Fair Scheduler should be a good argument for pluggable schedulers. It shows one scheduler can't fit all use cases, but I doubt Linus will listen.
C
Re:Open source is the coat tails that Google rides (Score:4, Insightful)
They take and take from open source and throw back a couple of table scraps and you people all kiss their ass for it.
300K lines of code? Yep, table scraps.
For people who wonder why I continue to want to see the end of the FSF, the above attitude is the reason why. Stallman and his organisation are the reason for it.
Aside from being ugly and spiritually bankrupt, reciprocity paranoia is based on completely erroneous reasoning, as well. The same people who talk about how music piracy isn't harming anyone, because it doesn't physically take away from a finite supply of copies, are also those who express the above paranoia about people "taking," from FOSS, as if that is somehow a physically finite resource, when music isn't.
Get rid of your fear.
Re:Open source is the coat tails that Google rides (Score:0, Insightful)
Could explain what tables scraps is?
- Their google summer of code program where they have invested millions of dollars into for many years now?
- The huge open source android framework you can use on mobile phones?
- The numerous number of useful projects they have released including the tools they used to make most of their products?
- The free project hosting resources they give open source projects?
- The government lobbying they have done to level the playing field for open technologies?
Yes, you are!
Re:Does Google give coade back (Score:1, Insightful)
I disagree with this statement. He's being paid to work on the kernel. What's the difference?
There is no big difference, semantically. But just in case you missed what Andrew does at Google and what Google does with Linux, here's a quick summary:
- Google pays Andrew to work on Linux, which is good, but any company could do that, since it's "just" money.
- Google uses Linux (extremely) heavily, which is interesting, and suggests the potential for interesting contributions from Google.
- Google modifies Linux heavily in order for it to function well for the applications Google needs it for, which again suggests the potential for interesting contributions from Google.
But, and this is the "bad" part:
- Google does in general not contribute any changes back to mainstream Linux, but rather keeps them in-house, for various reasons (questionable quality, very Google-specific, tied to a much earlier version of the kernel, lack of man-power to maintain included changes in mainstream on an on-going basis, and so on.)
There might be a genuine ambition within Google to rectify some (or most?) of the above, in order to be more synced up with mainstream, which would lessen the barrier somewhat for including more of the changes needed for Google, but that isn't happening much today, so we'll just have to wait and see. Maybe something will change during 2010?
I hope the above makes things a bit clearer.