The Billion Dollar Kernel 289
Posted
by
CmdrTaco
from the that's-a-lotta-dough dept.
from the that's-a-lotta-dough dept.
jesgar writes "The Linux kernel would cost more than one billion EUR (about 1.4 billion USD) to develop in the European Union. This is the estimate made by researchers from the University of Oviedo (PPT), whereby the value annually added to this product was about 100 million EUR between 2005 and 2007 and 225 million EUR in 2008. The estimated 2008 result is comparable to 4% and 12% of Microsoft's and Google's R&D expenses on whole company products. Cost model 'Intermediate COCOMO81' is used according to parametric estimations by David Wheeler. An average annual base salary for a developer of 31,040 EUR was estimated from the EUROSTAT. Previously, similar works had been done by several authors estimating Red Hat, Debian, and Fedora distributions. The cost estimation is not of itself important, but it is an important means to an end: that commons-based innovation must receive a higher level of official recognition that would set it as an alternative to decision-makers. Ideally, legal and regulatory frameworks must allow companies participating on commons-based R&D to generate intangible assets for their contribution to successful projects. Otherwise, expenses must have an equitable tax treatment as a donation to social welfare."
Re:Seems a bit high (Score:5, Informative)
You are nuts.
12 people at 40 hours a week for 9 months is 1123200 minutes. The kernel is about 12 million lines of code. That works out to a line of code every 5 and a half seconds.
Good luck with that.
Re:Ramifications (Score:5, Informative)
You'd need to check local laws, but I doubt it: charitable donations are usually only deductable to a registered charity. Mind you, if your local LUG is a registered charity, then you probably could...
Re:American perspective? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:One hand tied behind your back (Score:2, Informative)
Not all Linux drivers had to be developed from reverse engineering. For hardware typically used in servers like ethernet cards and RAID controllers, the hardware companies often supply drivers and if not drivers at least specs to the kernel devs. Even Broadcom helps with ethernet drivers, it's with wireless that they're difficult.
But with Nouveau, yeah, it's a miracle that it works at all.
Re:Ramifications (Score:3, Informative)
No. Donations of time or labor aren't deductible.
Re:Salary (Score:3, Informative)
If said kernel developers were actually working in Oviedo, the city where they researched this, 31K is more than most would ever make. Your typical graduate in his first local programming job gets 15K at best. 30K is a top level salary over there. Last summer, no local company ever came close to offering me half of what I make in an affordable town in the American midwest.
Re:Ramifications (Score:3, Informative)
Ostensibly, because charitable contributions benefit everyone and therefore the government should encourage them in the only light-handed way possible, i.e. by not taxing them. Certainly, there are more political answers as to why it has come to be like it is.
You could look at it another way, a charitable contribution is almost necessarily a 'gratis' contribution, as in you receive no quantifiable return for your donation (outside of things like a 'gift' with marginal value). Therefore, it's as if you never made the money in the first place. Why there are no charitable deductions for simply setting fire to money, is a question left for the reader.
Re:31,040 EUR??? (Score:3, Informative)
Even in Romania and even with the whole economy downturn, you can't find a skilled programmer at 8 EUR/h. You can get someone competent enough from 15 EUR/h... and for kernel-level knowledge, much higher that that.
Kernel development is not PHP stuff...