The Linux Foundation Releases Annual Linux Development Report 101
darthcamaro writes "The Linux Foundation's Who Writes Linux report (sign up required) is now out and after 22 yrs leading Linux, Linux creator Linus Torvalds has fallen out of the list of top 100 developers in terms of code contributions. He currently ranks 101st for number of patches generated from the Linux 3.3 to the Linux 3.10 kernel releases." Read below for a few highlights from the report.
Nearly 10,000 developers from more than 1,000 companies have contributed to the Linux kernel since tracking began in 2005. Just since the last report, more than 1,100 developers from 225 companies have contributed to the kernel. In fact, more developers and companies are contributing to Linux than ever before with Linux kernel 3.10 seeing the most developer contributions ever. Mobile and embedded companies are increasing their investments in Linux. Linaro, Samsung and Texas Instruments together increased their aggregate contributions from 4.4 percent during the previous version of the paper to 11 percent of all changes this year. Google’s contributions are also up significantly this year.
The Top 10 organizations sponsoring Linux kernel development since the last report include Red Hat, Intel, Texas Instruments, Linaro, SUSE, IBM, Samsung, Google, Vision Engraving Systems Consultants and Wolfson Microelectronics. After appearing on the list for the first time in 2012, Microsoft notably dropped off the list entirely this year. A complete list of the top 30 organizations sponsoring this work is included in the paper.
The rate of Linux development is unmatched. The average number of changes accepted into the kernel per hour is 7.14, which translates to 171 changes every day and more than 1,200 per week.
Yes but... (Score:5, Interesting)
does that matter? He still maintains the repo, still performs the merges, still does the quality control, still determines the direction of future updates. As Slashdot is fond of saying, the quality of a developer isn't just determined by the number of lines or commits he contributes.
I don't know why that bit about Torvalds is even necessary, unless someone is trying to take a swipe at him. Again.
Nobody from Ubuntu (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:But Linus still ranks 1st in profane tirades (Score:5, Interesting)
I wouldn't say he's first. He's just the most publicized. Theo from OpenBSD is pretty bad and a quick glance over the Debian mailing lists will blow your mind. Linus is bad but there are far worse offenders than him.
Re:Greatest (Score:1, Interesting)
The first contrary example that quickly springs to mind:
Guido van Rossum started Python in 1989.
Linus didn't start Linux till 1991.
And Guido seems to do it without being an asshole.
I'm sure there are others in the open source world, and many more, though perhaps not well known, doing long standing closed source projects.
Re:Greatest (Score:4, Interesting)
I think that pretty much makes him the greatest software development manager of all time.
Automatically, when anyone makes these kinds of statements, I consider Stallman as well. Linux wouldn't have gotten very far without a compiler, and my understanding is that gcc was basically the only compiler around at the time (you know what I mean - icc, etc. don't count). And of course, you could also make a claim that it was all of Stallman's work with GNU that kept Linux and many other projects open instead of being overtaken by greedy interests and left to die in obscurity.
While all of this makes for a great debate, it's of course always going to be very subjective and there's never any real answer. I'm sure that there are many others that could also go in here as well (Larry Wall, Ritchie, Kernighan, and so on).