75% of Linux Code Now Written By Paid Developers 368
i_want_you_to_throw_ writes "During a presentation at Linux.conf.au 2010 in Wellington, LWN.net founder and kernel contributor Jonathan Corbet offered an analysis of the code contributed to the Linux kernel between December 24 2008 and January 10 2010. The Linux world makes much of its community roots, but when it comes to developing the kernel of the operating system, it's less a case of 'volunteers ahoy!' and more a case of 'where's my pay?'"
It's not clear from the article why anyone should perceive a contradiction between having high ideals and getting paid to do something you enjoy.
Missing critical information... (Score:2)
Re:Missing critical information... (Score:5, Insightful)
How much does a line of code cost?
Cost-per-line is a patently bad way to compute the worth of code or value of a coder. Knowing what to code is more important then just writing the code. Features implemented or bugs fixed is probably a better measure.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
From most of the Linux advocates I hear commenting on slashdot, there AREN'T bugs or missing features in Linux. So why the developers? ;)
No, I'm serious. You'd think Windows couldn't stand on its own legs for two minutes before crashing due to the amount of bugs in the code, and you'd think Linux had no bugs whatsoever.
I like Linux and have no problem with devs getting paid to work on it. Sound slike a good idea to me; in fact, it sound slike how almost every single product in the world is made, pretty m
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From most of the Linux advocates I hear commenting on slashdot, there AREN'T bugs or missing features in Linux.
That is patently a lie.
Phillip.
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From most of the Linux advocates I hear commenting on slashdot, there AREN'T bugs or missing features in Linux.
That is patently a lie.
Phillip.
I can't tell what level of indirection applies to the word "that" so:
Semi-whoosh!
Re:Missing critical information... (Score:5, Insightful)
Value for money, my friend. My Windows and my Linux machines have, lets be honest, a relatively similar number of problems. Windows suffers from the most outright bugs, but then Linux can still sometimes throw a hardware or compatibility wobbly, and sometimes does suffer the occasional deeper problem.
The difference is that one of them is distributed free over the internet, and the other cost me £150 and still delights in harassing how "genuine" I am every time I visit the developer's website.
You tend to be far more forgiving when something is both free (beer) and, feels like it belongs to you instead of some distant oligarchy.
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Only if what your doing is of little to no value. The Windows tax is trivial compared to what I use my Windows machines for. The genuine advantage thing used to bother me, but then I grew up and just realized that I got so much use out of the OS that the price wasn't really that bad. I'd spend more in 2 days getting drunk off my ass on the weekend when I lived in Orland
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How much does a line of code cost?
Cost-per-line is a patently bad way to compute the worth of code or value of a coder.
Of course, which is probably why the question mentioned nothing about worth or coder value. Knowing that a line of code costs $1 (or whatever) on average, you can then start looking at various modules within the Linux kernel and project how much it would cost for an average developer to reimplement (on a BSD project, for example) based on the number of lines in that module.
To get the relative value of a coder, you could take a sampling over a large enough period of time and then say that, on average, this
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'Of course, which is probably why the question mentioned nothing about worth or coder value'
And yet, you outline a system that values of coder in a given area of expertise based on the number of lines of code produced.
Even within 'a given area of expertise' the number of lines of code, or average number of lines of code produced by a developer is a meaningless number beyond determining if the developer is working at all.
An unproductive and useless developer can churn out tons of code that doesn't actually d
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And yet, you outline a system that values of coder in a given area of expertise based on the number of lines of code produced.
LOC is never going to tell you the whole story, but in a system with some decent code review it will give you at least a pointer.
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http://www.ohloh.net/wiki/project_codebase_cost [ohloh.net]
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I have programmer friends who work in jobs where they have to produce a certain amount of code. (I'm assuming that comment lines don't count, which is why comments are non-existent in some software projects.) The underlying metric would be how much does a line of code cost. I'm not saying this is a good or bad metric. When I saw the summary, I thought it was missing some information.
There are some PHBs who would argued that Linux was crap because no one can tell them this metric even though the software
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varies with the line.
base cost is the the coderss hourly wage. if a coder earning $50/hour codes 10 lines in an hour, cost is $5/line.
now, for difficult lines, if he takes half an hour to finish the line, the cost for that one is $25.
of course, theres more people involved in the process than just one coder.
but the basics are the same.
cost per line = (sum of all employees wages * time spent to code X lines ) / number of lines writen
this will give you an average for the whole project.
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Doesn't this seem like a useless metric, though? You can't measure functionality by lines of code in a program (although, at some point, you could probably draw an inverse relationship). What purpose does this data serve?
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How much does a line ... cost?
First one's free?
How efficient is that ? (Score:3, Interesting)
How many paid kernel developers does microsoft have ? How many does Sun have ? I can't find any straight numbers on the web.
A thought strikes me, though. It seems unlikely to be more than a few dozen each, at most.
Good Ones, Who know NON-SEQUENTIAL (Score:3, Insightful)
The question goes to the Cathedral and the Bazaar dichotomy and the Brooks "Mythical Man Month" about OS 360, and how you count the dev team, kernel core or that and associated userland.
DEC: Tops 10 2 x lead + 6 mostly
AT&T Bell Labs: 3 x lead + 20
VAX-VMS: 1-2 lead + 40 (inc RSX-11 drivers)
WNT+: initially 1-4 lead + 20, clone VMS
Linux: initially 1 lead + 0, now 1 + 25 leads +4000
The 4000 number says it all. Rob Gingell, who used to run SUN's Sola
Re:Good Ones, Who know NON-SEQUENTIAL (Score:4, Insightful)
When you say that, you omitted all developers working for Intel, AMD, ATI, nVidia, 3com, Boradcom, ... that work on drivers. I would not be surprised if most of the 4000 developers of Linux knew only a few modules required for development of their favorite device driver.
And this is a bad thing?! (Score:5, Insightful)
The Linux world makes much of its community roots, but when it comes to developing the kernel of the operating system, it's less a case of 'volunteers ahoy!' and more a case of 'where's my pay?'
Since when does community == volunteers?
That large, well funded corporations are now contributing members of the linux community is a Good Thing.
Re:And this is a bad thing?! (Score:5, Interesting)
Good point. In a sense, you could say that these companies are "volunteers". They're each a group of people who are "scratching their own itch" and donating their resulting work back to the rest of the community.
And even if 75% of Linux code is contributed by these companies, that still leaves 25% which isn't. If you think about it, that's actually kind of impressive. You have all these huge companies paying very good developers to build a robust professional-level kernel-- heavyweight companies like Intel, Oracle, IBM, Novell, and Redhat-- and still 25% of the code comes from individual unpaid developers?
Re:And this is a bad thing?! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Right. Lots of the "free" stuff in the Internet age are cases where people have found an alternate way to make money from it. Google provides some great services by selling ad space. IBM and Intel are alway listed as big Linux code contributors, but they don't sell Linux. They sell hardware, and they want a good software to run on their hardware so that they can sell more hardware. IBM also sells lots of "e-business" services and they develop custom solutions, but they need good operating systems to ru
Re:And this is a bad thing?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Since when does community == volunteers?
That large, well funded corporations are now contributing members of the linux community is a Good Thing.
Exactly! What's great about Linux is that it's free, not that its developers are unpaid!
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Well, it certainly explains why Linux is starting to suffer from severe bloat.
...
...Now it's largely professional...
BS, I have worked with lots of professionals who are excellent devs and work to show off their best skills.
Good. Glad to Hear It. (Score:2, Insightful)
I rely upon Linux for my business. If something isn't all it should be, or developments don't happen as fast as they could, I'm gratified to know that money is changing hands and somebody might get canned and replaced by another, better professional.
If Linux wants to sit at the adults' table -- and it clearly has the depth and breadth of functionality to do so -- then there needs to be the kind of professional accountability in its developers that only a paycheck can engender.
Re:Good. Glad to Hear It. (Score:5, Insightful)
If Linux wants to sit at the adults' table -- and it clearly has the depth and breadth of functionality to do so -- then there needs to be the kind of professional accountability in its developers that only a paycheck can engender.
Billions lost on failed UK IT projects by the 'adults' with developers receiving very fat paycheques shows it guarantees neither success of the project nor accountability within it.
Phillip.
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Billions lost on failed UK IT projects by the 'adults' with developers receiving very fat paycheques shows it guarantees neither success of the project nor accountability within it.
That, and if you look at Unix-like systems, you will see that all of them are dead or dying, except for those that are being carried by volunteers (BSD, GNU, Darwin (mostly BSD), and perhaps OpenSolaris). If "the kind of professional accountability in its developers that only a paycheck can engender" is what a software project needs to "sit at the adults' table", then maybe sitting at the adults' table is not what you really want for your project. After all, all those adults are now either dead or on life s
Linux IS the adults table (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux is the adults table. The adults all sit at it. You've heard of Google, IBM, Sun, Oracle, Novell?
Re:Good. Glad to Hear It. (Score:5, Funny)
So, exactly how much are you paying for the Linux you rely on for your business?
$699. I thought everyone paid this.
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As someone who doesn't like RPM based distros and as someone who makes a very good living on Linux, I've gone the Linux Foundation membership route [linuxfoundation.org] $100 a year is nothing compared to the money Linux makes me each year.
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... professional accountability...
In software? Where?
If anything, the meritocracy of the OSS model is going to provide at least as much accountability as a paycheck can.
Seems to me the paycheck is going to assure conformity with the employer's needs - many of which have no technical basis.
"community" doesn't mean "unpaid" (Score:4, Insightful)
There seems to be some assumption that "community" means "unpaid". Not at all. The Free Software community includes a whole lot of people who get paid to use software to meet the needs of employers. If meeting those needs involves improving bits of Free Software, the employer benefits from having those contributions integrated into the product.
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There seems to be some assumption that "community" means "unpaid". Not at all. The Free Software community includes a whole lot of people who get paid to use software to meet the needs of employers. If meeting those needs involves improving bits of Free Software, the employer benefits from having those contributions integrated into the product.
I suspect that the provided statistic is true of a large number of *SUCESSFUL* open source projects, Apache and OpenOffice come to mind.
Perceived conflict between ideals and money... (Score:2)
pay? (Score:5, Insightful)
...it's less a case of 'volunteers ahoy!' and more a case of 'where's my pay?'"
I'd say its more a case of "I get paid to do this? who-hoo".
Re:pay? (Score:4, Insightful)
Red Hat has put some of the largest kernel contributors on the payroll, these guys were heavy lifters BEFORE they got paid. now they can do it full time.
Hmmm... (Score:2)
Sure, it's cool to be able to say that you're paid to work on the Linux kernel. But how many of that paid 75% would do it for free? How many would have to do something else to put food on the table if there were not a corporation to pay them?
What I take away from this is the fact that the Linux "community" is dominated by corporations. In many cases (but no
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Considering most of them(Linus included) used to do it for free in their after work times? I'd say pretty good.
Dominated is the wrong word.. Linus for instance refused to have a "Linux job" for years because he was afraid it would taint his decision making. Now he works for the Linux Foundation so hes guaranteed neutrality. A lot of other developers got hired because some corporation liked what they were doing but wanted it done faster so it's more a matter of Linux developers getting payed to do what th
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Sure, it's cool to be able to say that you're paid to work on the Linux kernel.
Certainly is. I'd decided at the age of 8yrs old the first company I was going to work for was Acorn. And it was. My friend loves Linux and so picks jobs where he gets to play with top end Linux clusters. Previously at CERN and now a top Swiss bank. For a real techie the work is more important than the size of the pay cheque.
But how many of that paid 75% would do it for free?
Depends what the code being contributed is. IBM is port
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I dunno. With the big contributors being Red Hat, Intel, IBM, Novell, and Oracle, I'd suspect that much of what some of them do -- particularly Red Hat and Intel and Novell -- has pretty broad impact on desktop users. (While IBM is supporting their mainframes, they do a lot of other things to, and I wouldn't be surprised if there contributions also had broad impact.)
Note also that paid contributions
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Put it back. It's no good. (Among the many flaws in your analysis is your mixing of commodity and service based businesses, and the fact that Google is powered by Linux)
What about Google? (Score:2, Insightful)
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So why isn't Google more involved in kernel development? I assume they use Linux extensively and hence make billions from using it. Do no evil, do no good?
Nope. They use Microsoft and IE6.
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You know that thing called the GPL? If you distribute binaries outside you must distribute the source code?
Google doesn't distribute outside. So while they ARE involved in Linux development, they keep things internal and send what code they want to send.
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Seriously, how much kernel development needs to be done? The OS kernel is the foundation for everything else. If it needs major development, then the project is not very stable by definition.
Given that Linux has been around for many years, it should be stable and hence need little if any changes. The majority of development should be on the application side.
25% non-corporate? (Score:5, Interesting)
As part of my job, I port Linux to our embedded boards and occasionally hack a driver or two.
However, in order not to scream out to our competitors "Hey! We're making a new product!", the small amounts of code I send pack at patches (it's a pain in are done so though a nondescript gmail account.
I suspect this practice is fairly widespread. Therefore, I'd say that 75% is an under-estimate.
Oh, man... (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh, man. To be a fly on the wall when Ballmer reads THIS little line...
"Within that field, Red Hat topped that chart with 12%, followed by Inte with 8%, IBM and Novell with 6% each, and Oracle 3%. Despite the clear commercial rivalry between those players, central kernel development worked well, Corbet noted."
And everyone thinks the Faraday Cage around his office was to keep his signals safe. The boys in Security know it is really to keep the chairs in his office...well, in his office.
misrepresented (Score:2)
There are definitely plenty of paid coders on the kernel. But are they counting the kernel hackers that companies have chosen to sponsor as paid or as volunteer? Does a grass roots volunteer kernel hacker stop counting once a company sponsors him to be able to contribute full time?
But are they in the software business? (Score:4, Interesting)
What percentage of these paid developers work for a company that derives its revenue primarily from software development?
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That's a good point and illustrates the advantage of free software from a user perspective. Users are spending money to get the features they need and lose nothing by those features being available to others gratis, especially when other's input is reciprocal.
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I think you misunderstood my point, but in any case, I don't think users will be happy to pay for features only to find out that others are getting it free. Reciprocation is a nice theory, but too abstract and indirect for most customers to buy into.
Re:But are they in the software business? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the point - bypass the middleman's sales overhead and profit.
On one hand, Company A buys software from Company B, indirectly funding the development of the software. If Company A wants changes or new features, they can beg and plead for them, and they might get them. Company A will indirectly pay for development at Company B whether or not they get the changes they want. Company B will then sell the software, possibly incorporating Company A's ideas and improvements, to all of Company A's competitors. Company B's customers pay the cost of the development, plus the cost of sales (marketing, commissions, etc.), plus a markup.
On the other hand, Company A hires developers to improve software that others have made freely available. They get exactly the changes they want. Company A's competitors also get those changes, but the reverse is true: Company A gets Company C's improvements. Both companies find this agreeable because neither can gain an advantage through the software, and both have reduced the cost of developing it. Company A has cut out the middlemen, avoiding the cost of sales and profits extracted by Company B.
You can't gain an advantage over your competition by buying your software from a third party, because your competitor can buy it, too. You can't gain an advantage over your competition by hiring developers to write open source software, because your competitor can dowload it, too. There's no difference between open source software and third party commercial closed source software as far as advantage over a competitor. The only way to use software as a competitive differentiator is to develop it internally, keep it closed, don't sell it, and pay the high cost of developing for a single customer - yourself.
In economic terms, software is a complementary good. Intel sells processors, which are not useful without software. But every dollar spent on software is a dollar that isn't spent on processors. Red Hat is in a similar situation; they sell support, not software, and giving away software makes money available for support.
The economics are simple. Any software that has a large enough base to support sales in binary form has a large enough base to support shared development under open source licenses with a lower overhead. Selling binaries is a temporary aberration caused by network effects during the initial growth of the market. As the market matures, sales of mass market software will decline.
Congratulations! (Score:2)
That's got to be the longest non-responsive post I've ever read.
Re:But are they in the software business? (Score:5, Informative)
Red Hat 11.2%
Novell 8.9%
Linux Foundation 2.6%
Oracle 1.3%
(among others)
Source: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/publications/linuxkerneldevelopment.php [linuxfoundation.org]
Open Source is not about money (Score:5, Interesting)
The new guys get the benefit of our experience and in ten years, we get to hire better new guys.
This means ... (Score:2)
... businesses are learning that contributing to a shared resource has value. And that efforts made to monopolize resources (like patents do) aren't as valuable as was assumed in the past.
Isn't that kind of the end goal? (Score:3, Interesting)
Paid to do what you enjoy (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not clear from the article why anyone should perceive a contradiction between having high ideals and getting paid to do something you enjoy.
One day a situation will arise when you will be expected to do something you dont enjoy.
You will choose between love and money, you will begin to discover how much your high ideals are worth.
Re:I'll be the first to say... (Score:5, Insightful)
What's wrong with that?
Except you're not the first, because that question is mentioned at the end of the summary.
Re:I'll be the first to say... (Score:5, Funny)
Lines of code written for money are evil and execute more slowly.
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Well that won't do! [codeoffsets.com]
Re:I'll be the first to say... (Score:5, Informative)
The big advantage of commercial software is that the sales revenue allows you to pay people to write it. It should come as no surprise that people LIKE being paid for working. If developers are being paid, the money doesn't just magically appear. Somebody, somewhere is paying for it. Intel, Oracle, etc. get their revenue for selling other kinds of stuff to people, stuff that they paid somebody to make, write or whatever. The revenue can then be invested in other projects of which support for linux is merely one.
Another advantage is that if you pay people to do something, you can hold them accountable for their work and hence increase productivity.
In the end the fact remains: there's no such thing as a free lunch.
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It's more about SAVING money. Linux is free, so they don't have to pay royalties. And in comparison to server OS costs to those companies listed, what's the relative value of programmer salaries?
I'm guessing not a whole lot...
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Another big benefit is that you can pay people other than software developers to work on your project. For example, artists, designers, usability experts, technical writers, trainers/evangelism.
All attempts to get people to donate those skills to open source projects (except perhaps evangelism) have pretty much failed.
The problem with this story is while a lot of companies are working on Linux, none of them are focused on usability and none of them are focused on the desktop-- the thing Linux is worst at. S
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Have you ever heard the phrase, "the buck stops here?" How about we stop passing the buck and get problems fixed? Note that in this case, "getting problems fixed" might actually involve leaving your basement and having to talk to actual human beings! Ick!
I frankly don't give a shit whose fault it is.
The sooner you figure that out, the sooner we might get a working Flash player.
Re:I'll be the first to say... (Score:4, Informative)
Kinda defensive, aren't you? Who said anything was wrong with it?
The article itself basically presents the facts, but it does mention that it's interesting that a bunch of companies that otherwise compete with each other are in fact cooperating to develop Linux.
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It is under the principle of better to pay a little bit more once, then paying over and over and over again and end up paying a whole lot more. Then there is also control, building of reputation and expertise. Not to mention to disruption of existing monopoly advantages.
When code competes rather than marketing, you get better code and better applications, when marketing competes you just get bigger lies and endless pay for the privilege beta testing.
Motives? (Score:3, Interesting)
To what extent do contributing companies have the same motives as contributing individuals? To what extent do these, possibly disparate, motivations coincide with the needs of end users? I think this is the underlying question inherent in this article, but I don't really have any firm answers.
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Most "end users" are companies that own servers.
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Everyone agrees that there's nothing wrong with getting paid to develop the Linux code.
However, what I do fear is, what will happen after Linus? I fear that the reason there's no clash between the different goals is because the people who are leading do a proper job of choosing what gets into the code. Hopefully someone with a proven history will be the current maintainer but, if for any reason, the wrong person takes the lead, kernel development would take a serious blow. Sure you can say 'fork it' but the
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What's wrong with that?
Nothing at all.
I remember getting my first programming job. I noted to my family almost exactly this: I'm doing what I love, and those fools are paying me to do it. These days I'm a little more mercenary (if they stop paying me I'll go and find some other employer) but I still love programming. Best. Gig. Ever.
Re:I'll be the first to say... (Score:4, Insightful)
"Remember, these people are getting paid for their labor, not paid a million times over, every time a copy of the code is distributed."
Now only if we could apply this concept to the music industry.
Re:I'll be the first to say... (Score:4, Insightful)
You can. Go to your favorite bands next concert.
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Well, my three favorite bands don't exist anymore, as they have at least one of its members dead. What should I do?
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1) Pump millions of dollars into time travel research
2) Freeze yourself (cryogenics)
3) ???
4) Profit!
Re:I'll be the first to say... (Score:5, Funny)
Ah, those would be the bands which only visit our country once every five years?
Yes, I know I should be supporting local bands who nobody has ever heard of who play genres like 'mathgazer shoerock', but my hipster card got revoked.
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A performance is labor, as opposed to selling millions of copies of a recorded album.
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And this differs from closed source software in what way? Did you believe that developers of closed source software typically get "a piece of the action"?
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The people paying them do.
No one is getting a piece of the action on Linux license sales, because there's no action to get a piece of.
Sure, businesses contributing to the kernel do get something out of it. Some of them have Linux support business, and get support contracts from people who want that sort of thing. Some of them just get a platform for apps (
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There's a big difference between entities -- individuals or corporations -- using their own resources to address their own need and sharing the results with a community who is free to use, and modify, the resulting work and closed source software.
Hear hear. Note that said community is also free to reject such results as it sees fit.
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"The people paying them do."
Sure, but that's not what the GP was arguing.
Re:Because It Makes A Mockery Of Everything Held H (Score:5, Funny)
6/10. Moderately good troll, but don't try to be all things to all people.
You can make a good case pointing out that this has happened millions of times before, and you can make a good case that cell phones are making a laughingstock of OSS, but trying both makes you seem confusing.
If you want an AC's advice, focus on the cell phone angle. Keep saying that Android & OS X are based on FOSS but go beyond their base in ways that the open source community never could. Try to blur the line between hardware and software (Apple, Apple, Nexus One, Apple!) and say that because you can't have a computer without hardware, which is propietary, there is no such thing as a good open source computer.
And then blur it all into websites. Google is a company and a lot of FOSS people use Google, therefore they are hypocrites and can't handle living in the world they push on everyone else. Then focus back on cell phones. Go for the 'the average user doesn't care about FOSS' angle - they hate that - and demand a 100% free piece of hardware to run a 100% free OS. If you somehow get a bite by someone who interprets 'free' as 'unlocked' then talk about how they paid five times the price and switch your argument to support - again, cite Google as proprietary.
I hope to hear from you again! Good luck!
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Linux just isn't ready for the desktop yet. It may be ready for the web servers that you nerds use to distribute your TRON fanzines and personal Dungeons and Dragons web-sights across the world wide web, but the average computer user isn't going to spend months learning how to use a CLI and then hours compiling packages so that they can get a workable graphic interface to check their mail with, especially not when they already have a Windows machine that does its job perfectly well and is backed by a major
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It boggles the mind... (Score:5, Insightful)
I have no issue whatsoever with a developer being compensated for their time, nor does it even raise an eyebrow for me.
I think the ethical standard here is that Linux is open source. That is open for peer review, open for other developers to work further on the ideas and ideals. Too often do people confuse this sort of "free" with the other sort: Mana from heaven.
Yes, you can download and install a linux copy for absolutely free, but thankfully, there is money to be made outside of just getting copies of bits and bytes to a PC. I do not think that there is anything wrong with that at all, and good on the highly intelligent and skilled developers of Linux saying "Where's my paycheck?"
Re:It boggles the mind... (Score:4, Insightful)
Ask me to design an operating system from the ground up, and I'll do it for free.
Ask me to take my operating system and make it work for you, and support it for as long as you need, I'll tell you to pay me.
That's the difference between programming for fun and programming for money, and that's why the GPL was a really good idea.
Re:So much for "free software", eh? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've installed countless ubuntu systems on people with little technical expertise that don't understand why they have 10 browser tool bars in their IE install and wonder why their computers run like shit.
In that case, wouldn't the easier solution be to install firefox on windows?
Don't get me wrong - I like Ubuntu despite the problems I've been having with Linux in general (they really need to get ATI support working properly). I also love the free-software ideal. But, realistically, there's no performance difference between Ubuntu and Windows XP or windows 7. The only problems people have with MS operating systems is that they keep voluntarily installing all sorts of crapware which slows down their machines. If 90% of users switched over to Ubuntu, don't you think that sooner or later they'd start having the same problems?
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What? And I thought it was to make money! You mean I've been wrong all this time?
Crapware people will TRY to target it. They won't succeed in sinking their hooks into the OS the way they can do on Windows. Any infestation will be easy to remove, and any deceptive apps very quickly exposed and blunted.
Windows malware is so successful because Windows is DESIGNED with DRM and concealment in mind to prevent you copying it
Re:So much for "free software", eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Free as in price and use. Since there are many many businesses that benefit greatly from Linux why is it so surprising that such businesses would pay to develop it further?
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Re:Open Source Devs Had 10 Years To Show Something (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Open Source Devs Had 10 Years To Show Something (Score:5, Interesting)
I disagree. Volunteer aren't being marginalized at all because most of the paid developers were at one point doing it for free. It's a sign Linux is maturing since now there are businesses willing to hire developers to add and maintain the features the care about.
Volunteers are still welcome but if they get well known for doing what they do then they are likely to get a job offer or two.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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Do you have any idea at all what you are talking about?
Please compare a kernel from Dec 31st, 1999 to a kernel today. I think you'll find that there isn't much left from the 90s. Fragments here and there sure, but if Linux was anything at all like what it was around the year 2k, no one would use it on a production system now days.
Re:Statistics (Score:4, Interesting)
And if we wait another 100 years, then 100% of Linux code will be written by historians. That's the power of statistics.
What the hell are you talking about? Historians are people that study the past, not lived in the past.
Linux is a mature project, amounts of code written today have a minuscule impact on the overall project compared with amounts of code written in the late 90s.
Linux kernel 2.2.19 (2001): 1.8M SLOC
Linux kernel 2.6.32 (2009): 12.6M SLOC
Nothing to see here. Linux is as much a volunteer project as it has ever been.
So if something was started by volunteers, it'll always be a volunteer project even though those writing code are no longer volunteers? Or did you not RTFHeadline?
Sometimes slashdot really could use a "-1, Nonsense" moderation...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Pretty sure you have your subjects mixed up. "There is no such thing as a free lunch" is an expression in physics.
Re: (Score:2)
The exact same thing has happened to the World Wide Web and all the protocols used to facilitate it: it has evolved to favor corporate desires and interests
Really? I remember Netscape trying to tie the web to themselves via proprietary extensions and failing. I remember Microsoft trying to tie it to ActiveX and failing. I remember Sun was going to control all our interactive applications through Java applets, but that never happened. Microsoft was going to control the vector graphics format by WML, but we a
Re: (Score:2)
I wasn't claiming that the takeover is complete, but the corporate world has gotten things that clearly favor them, like the very existence (and persistence) of Macromedia Flash, to the great anguish of millions of users worldwide. Some of the additions to HTML and related protocols exist to facilitate advertising on the Web, in particular. The victories you mention are truly victories, the result of The People fighting back, but not all the battles were won in the People's favor, and the war is far from
Re: (Score:2)
I admit that sounds somewhat logical to make that assumption on the face of it, but if that's truly what occurs then why don't we see the same occurring in politics? Nope, instead we see the corporations getting what they want in spite of harm to the Common Good. Why would you believe the two would function differently when it's the same social and economic pressures at work in both?
Witness the Supreme Court vote to