Novell Rises to Second Highest Linux Contributor 135
eldavojohn writes "Which companies contribute the most to the Linux kernel? Well, The Linux Foundation released their results and Novell's contributions have gone up 250% (from 3.6% of all contributions to 14.4% of all contributions) to put them at #2 behind Red Hat. This chart also illustrates just how widely Linux is modified by the community and not just a handful of developers/companies. You can find more coverage on blogs and the original report."
Captain Conspiracy Time (Score:5, Interesting)
I also must wonder if Novell's only intent is to stay a key part of Linux to maintain this Microsoft partnership?
Or if Microsoft is urging them to become an even bigger player so that Microsoft can feel like and threaten people that Microsoft owns even more of the Linux kernel, not just the vague patent threats? One of the articles mentions this notion of not 'owning the source code' but rather 'owning the source of the code.' Could this be Microsoft's new target?
Then there's the super fun idea that Novell is putting in source code from Windows that Windows "accidentally" gave Novell which does several things at once. It justifies Novell's payment for protection from Microsoft litigation, it hobbles their competitors in the Linux realm and it gives Microsoft the power to go after any user or company using Linux with the 'stolen' code. It would also tie up Linux for a bit until that mess was sorted out.
I mean, since Novell's already demonstrated they're Microsoft's bitch and admitted it [slashdot.org] what is preventing any of the above whacked out theories from being true?
Re:Captain Conspiracy Time (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Captain Conspiracy Time (Score:4, Interesting)
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Even Better... (Re:Captain Conspiracy Time) (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Even Better... (Re:Captain Conspiracy Time) (Score:4, Insightful)
If you want to create (and possibly maintain) a forked version of kernel without the offending changes, fine, but that may be an unfeasibly large amount of work, especially considering the number of changes they make.
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It might be too hard for your average roll-your-own-kernel type, but for most users who are using a kernel provided by their distribution, these kinds of shenanigans shouldn't affect them much because Red Hat is going to do the hard work of stripping the offending code out.
Re:Captain Conspiracy Time (Score:4, Funny)
Right. And therefore, presumably, the GP's concerns are without foundation, since it will be a simple matter to grep for the string SEKRIT MS PATENTED CODE: DO NOT USE in the comments.
I'm surprised no one has seen it before, really.
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You can make up a LOT when you don't know anything (Score:3, Insightful)
Then there's the super fun idea that Novell is putting in source code from Windows that Windows "accidentally" gave Novell
Pure paranoia only serves to hurt everyone, and doesn't help anyone (except maybe Microsoft).
These arguments are starting to sound like a "who's the alien shape shifter?" speech by the guy who's lost it in your average bad sci-fi show.
Re:You can make up a LOT when you don't know anyth (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, and it's usually the first guy to ask that question who turns out to be the alien... waitaminute...
OMG, eldavojohn is submitting Windows code to the Linux kernel! Burn him!
GPL v3, v2 (Score:2)
Easy peasy...if Novell drops code that infringes upon MS code, Novell can be sued for knowingly violating the GPL. Yes, the end result may be code rewrites in the kernel, but no Linus user will be held accountable for Novell's mistakes. So does Novell want to cut its own throat? Maybe someone higher up is willing to take that chance and cash out from the fire sale. But then again with Sarbanes-Oxley lurking out there, this could quickl
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Please stop using Linus (srsly, he's gotta be tired already), and consider using Linux instead. It won't complain about your choice of filesystem, nor will it go behind your back and rant on mailing lists.
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Lack of evidence?
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Novel is fighting SCO, and SCO is Microsoft's tool (Score:2)
Re:Captain Conspiracy Time (Score:4, Insightful)
B)It would only affect jurisdictions that recognize software patents.
C)It would be a very high-risk way to achieve your goals since you have to trust a third party which could potentially reveal your clandestine operations, if Microsoft wanted to do this it would be easier to make the contribution as a random individual, thus making it harder to track it back to Microsoft.
D)Hurting Linux would hurt Novell eventually. They may have been stupid to sign that agreement with Microsoft, but they do know VERY well what happened to SCO. Since the patents would only gain them anything in countries that recognize them, and as they have a potential to lose their business everywhere that does not, it would be an extremely high risk move.
E)IBM, RedHat etc doesn't need to prove Microsoft was behind the scheme to retaliate. Should Microsoft use software patents against Linux, either directly or by proxy, they could sue Microsoft over other patents ( and as per "A" they certainly do have the means to do so ). It would be enough that they strongly suspect Microsoft is in the background to trigger mutually assured destruction, and Microsoft knows this.
Essentially, the day Microsoft decides to use software patents against Linux is the day you know they are so desperate they have nothing left to lose. So far they are mainly using patent FUD, but when the empire eventually does crumble they will certainly try, other companies will retaliate, and the collateral damage will be huge.
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A) if they don't sue soon, then it won't matter, will it? I don't believe they do; they just rattle swords well
B) oh yeah, juridictions that support sotware patents.... let' say some 590M users in US, Japan, Canada, etc?
C) we agree that patent baiting through Novell would be beyond explosive
D) MS fears and deals with all competitors eventually, but they've softened on Linux because they're still getting loads of server revenues, so it's not so bad for them, especially with the DOJ looking over th
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Actually, I tend to view Darl McBride's "set the controls for the heart of the sun" strategy as increasing the plausibility of the conspiracy theorie
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Re:Captain Conspiracy Time (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea that Novell is going to seed "microsoft" code into Linux is ridiculous on the face of it. You can't just copy paste windows device driver code into Linux and expect it to work... and windows coding styles vs linux coding styles are so different that it would be obvious in an instant if such a thing happened.
Seriously, not everything that Microsoft does is part of some big conspiracy to eat your babies. I think the reasoning behind their partnership is fairly clear.
Linux *does* have a strong position in the server market, and for practical reasons Microsoft *has* to be able to interoperate with at least *some* Linux distros. This isn't a position that they are super happy to be in, and the fact that they made this deal to support operation with Suse should be seen as a *victory* by Linux in the marketplace.
Microsoft is trying to do damage control by positioning some Linux vendors as partners instead of competitors. If Linux becomes any more successful than it is, you can expect to see Microsoft try to make deals with other Linux vendors like Red Hat, to try to insure that Linux is used in *conjunction* with Microsoft server products, rather than risk having Microsoft be cut out of the market entirely.
Re:Captain Conspiracy Time (Score:5, Insightful)
And you would be right, if you weren't totally wrong, this is no victory for Linux, if anything it is a point of shame, all the little interoperability Novell won by this was coming anyways after the recent fight the EU got with MS (ask samba) All Novell has made is make a deal that allows MS to portray themselves as owners of all the Linux IP and forces Linux (SLED) users to pay a MS tax, not to mention that Novell has mostly become MS' personal bitch after it. With all the Silverlight debacle and the OOXML debacle for which Novell is a big responsible for what just happened with ISO recently.
Not to forget that the reason Novell helps Linux so much is because it gives them a free platform where they can build the MONO dependent OS they would love to see.
Novell apologetic is harming FLOSS like no other wrong attitude, the deal has only been negative for Linux, period. You may try to make it look like something good or proof of Linux success, as a matter of fact it does prove MS was really afraid of FLOSS, however the rresult of the deal has only been a negative effect after another. BTW redhat has multiple times stated they actually got dignity and they won't make such deals with MS.Re: (Score:2)
The reason Novell created Mono is for the following:
- It allows code to be written once for windows in C# and it is then binary compatible with Linux through Mono;
- Novell offers the same products (ZENworks/eDirectory/Groupwise/etc.) for Windows / Linux and Netware, so it is VERY important for them to be able to run the same code on mult
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and two, $350 milion with Novell is over patent infringement.
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The origin of source code in Linux can be traced. If Microsoft a
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shhhhhhh be quiet, don't tell anyone (Score:5, Funny)
all because of SuSE ? (Score:2)
I may get b$tch slapped for this, but isn't this primarily as a result of them acquiring SuSE? Having been a Linux user for some eight years, and a SuSE user for seven years and twelve months, I've always considered SuSE at the forefront. As a matter of fact ther reason I switched was because my version of Redhat at the time had limited driver support. SuSE on the other hand had a full line of Xwin drivers.
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I may get b$tch slapped for this
OK, prepare yourself.
First, Novell announced their acquisition of SUSE in 2003, the same year that that they bought Ximian. At this point, its difficult to tell which acquisition is responsible for more of their GNU/Linux work.
Secondly, from the article: "while Novell has jumped from an anemic 3.6 percent in 2007 to a robust 8.9 percent in 2008". Which means that their recent surge in productivity has nothing to do with their acquisitions of SUSE or Ximian. It has to do with their allocation of reso
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Sometimes people put various characters to censor a swear word. Like "S#%T!" etc. Perhaps he just used one $ for this purpose.
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Of course, this is immaterial to the subject at hand; in general, X drivers are implemented in userspace rather than the kernel. Did they also develop kernel drivers frequently?
Frankly, I would love to see statistics from the Linux Foundation on Linux contributions going back a decade or so. Also, I would definitely love a breakdown of the kernel sections to which each company contributed. My guess is that these days, many of those piddly 0.3-0.7% contributi
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Its worth noting, however, that the Linux kernel as it stands simply doesn't work with any compiler other than GCC. Have you every read the kernel source code? Fully 20% of the damn thing is GCC-specific preprocessor directives (I might be exaggerating a bit). I think that at one point, there was an effort to make it compile with the Intel compiler (which, performance-wise, it much s
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May have been true once, but it hasn't been for a long time. I recall seeing news about using Intel's [intel.com] compiler to build a Linux kernel years ago. More recently, Rob Landley's been doing some work with tinycc [landley.net] to get it up to snuff for kernel compiles, with the goal of generating a system that can "...completely rebuild itself, under itself, without any gnu code on the hard drive."
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Re:all because of SuSE ? (Score:5, Funny)
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And this is shocking? (Score:2)
Re:And this is shocking? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is not surprising that the two are connected, nor is it neccessary, but it should be applauded when such a correlation appears. If we look at Ubuntu/Canonical for instance, by your standards, they should be pretty high on the list, right? In fact, they do not even appear on this list. Even Mandriva makes an appearance at 0.4%. Note that I do not know if Debian or Ubuntu developers fall into the Other or Unknown categories, but Debian exists as an organization and Canonical is a company, so I would expect them to be represented somehow, at least a footnote, if their contributions were of a sufficient size to make this list. I do not expect that every distro should employ kernel hackers. Ubuntu is more focused on user experience than kernel level features. So they do play a key role in the development of Linux as a complete operating system. My point here is that distributing a popular distro does not mean you develop a proportional share of the Linux kernel, or any linux software. Luckily, open source software enables and encourages such contributions back to the community. So don't say, "Well, given their size and profits, Novell should be doing that", instead say, "Kudos to Novell for giving back proportionaly to their success".
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It is not surprising that the two are connected, nor is it neccessary, but it should be applauded when such a correlation appears.
Agreed, though I never implied any causation between the two. I simply said it shouldn't be surprising that they contribute a lot.
If we look at Ubuntu/Canonical for instance, by your standards, they should be pretty high on the list, right? In fact, they do not even appear on this list.
Canonical may or may not contribute. The data presented (if true) says little about the matter one way or the other. Around 25% of contribution are either from individuals or from unknown groups. Also this data is just for kernel contributions. It's quite possible that they don't contribute much to the kernel but instead contribute elsewhere. There are plenty of projects
Correction (Score:2)
Re:Captain Conspiracy Time (Score:2)
Missing? (Score:5, Funny)
Congratulations, Novell. (Score:5, Insightful)
dear god (Score:2)
yea, but (Score:1, Flamebait)
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No Desktops (Score:2)
With more talk of desktop Linux these days, and a small but real increase in desktop market share (as reported from web stats), you would think some of that would be reflected in kernel development. But it looks as though big business and expensive hardware is s
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now dell, i don't know how many of the drivers they develop internally, maybe drive by dell has pused, for example, broadcom up in the list ?
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But, but..Novell is EVIL!!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Now if only.... (Score:2)
and...
WTF is the point of copying autoyast user scripts to a location on the hard drives to run from...if they unmount the #!@$!@#$ install media (CD here) before they do the #!$#@!$ copy????
Where is Canonical? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Where is Canonical? (Score:5, Insightful)
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and you'll see some contributions, though not as many as from Novell/Suse.
The authors of this paper are basically doing a souped-up version of the above, extracting author/committer information from the git history. (Though with some specialized scripts, and
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Novell, Microsoft, and Crispin Cowan (Score:2)
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Re:Where is Canonical? (Score:4, Informative)
In fact, the reality is also that Canonical's only other big flagship product, Launchpad, is completely proprietary.
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Where's Google? (Score:3, Insightful)
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It's Just The Jernel (Score:2, Insightful)
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and
"The kernel is just one part of Linux."
Aah, a cup of coffee and a good laugh in the morning.
Actually they're in 4th place (Score:2, Interesting)
How comprehensive is this list? (Score:3, Informative)
Regarding the former, I think it is very much worth noting, more than Novell's increased contributions, that so much is still being done by independent contributors. As for the latter, what exactly does that mean? How can we not know where changes come from. That's a bit disconcerting.
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It's not that they don't know who's contributing... they just don't know if the person contributing works for a company. Or... they know that the person works for a company but they don't know if company is supporting that particular contribution. Remember, the table was showing companies, not people.
Novell (Score:5, Interesting)
A lot of the stuff they are working on is pretty cool, especially Mono.
However, I think it's clear that there just isn't room in the market place for another distro.
Re:Novell (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yes I was once a happy suse client (when it was german) but our days of paying Novell have past. While not everybody in Novell is evil, i'd rather not support a company that does the evil deal with Microsoft.
All our servers are now Debian. Most clients - Ubunto/Debian.
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And Suse Linux Enterprise Server is a very well supported distro in the enterprise environment. 3th party vendors are usually only offering two options to run their products on (in a supported way): Novell SLES or Redhat.
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I wonder how many people/IT chiefs rejected to use Novell solutions and Suse since they were seriously irritated by the cool Mono developer and his actions like "installing
Novell was a great company while they were actually competing with Microsoft. Now, f
Money Makes A Difference (Score:2, Insightful)
How much of that (Score:2)
Can they be trusted? How are the changes vetted? (Score:5, Interesting)
OTOH, it makes me more interested in OpenSolaris, and it makes me wish the Hurd people would stop starting over from scratch. It also makes me more interested in BSD, even though I prefer the GPL.
Sun has talked about releasing OpenSolaris under GPL3. If they do, I'm going to be VERY interested.
If Linux were under GPL3, I wouldn't be worried about Novell. It isn't. The language of the GPL is equivocal in terms of what it means WRT patents. I think it means that if you can't distribute something legally and allow those who receive it to also distribute it, then you don't have the right to distribute it. Unfortunately, it's not totally clear about this. It was written before software could be patented, and it certainly didn't contemplate patents like a patent on adding 2 + 2 in Basic. (That particular one is harmless...but it's a magnificent example of the kind of foolish stuff that's allowed to be patented.) So the writing of the GPL frequently used general terms. Terms which apply with equal force to trademarks, copyrights, and patents, even though all are very distinct in their limitations and powers. As a result, it allows patents to be used in most places that it allows trademarks to be used. UGH!!! A sensible interpretation of the GPL would, indeed, mean that the GPL3 was unnecessary. I don't feel like I can count on the courts coming to a sensible interpretation in any reasonable amount of time.
So I trust GPL3 code coming from Novell. Other code...leaves me hesitant.
This is sort of like how I feel about Mono. I'm not certain it's booby-trapped, but I can't tell, so I'd rather avoid it. I'm risk averse. I know it. I've always been risk averse. To me, trusting Novell looks like excessive risk. I *hope* their code is being thoroughly vetted by those who know better than I do what's dangerous. I fear it isn't.
Re:Can they be trusted? How are the changes vetted (Score:2)
GPLv2 was from the early 90s. The Free Software Foundation has been working against software patents longer than that - one of the classic cases RMS cites is from the mid-80s of the FSF trying to create a compression program that doesn't use a patented algorithm.
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Still, this only increases my admiration for the foresight of RMS.
Why isn't google on this list? (Score:1)
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"To be fair to one company, Google, we were incorrectly counting their representation, keeping Andrew Morton in the "Linux Foundation" bucket instead of the "Google" bucket. That will change the list of top companies placing Google somewhere between 10 and 13, I haven't re-run the numbers yet to get the exact placement."
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Other companies have a stake here... (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't see this as anything evil or underhanded, being a network stack hacker myself. The kernel maintainers and core contributers are far from stupid and gullible, and will *not* accept anything if they see proprietary undertones. I'm also sure they're putting a bit more scrutiny into reviewing patches from Novell just because. But the bottom line is more people are working on the kernel, trying to make it better, which is the end-goal. It really, in my mind, doesn't matter who is doing it, just as long as it's getting done and done well.
Re:Now if they would just opensource edirectory (Score:5, Interesting)
Inspires confidence, no?
Open it or port it. (Score:2)
Novell has some good products. But they will not port them to Debian/Ubuntu. Nor will they Open them.
Re:Open it or port it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yast2 has been GPL'd, same for the Apparmor stuff which Ubuntu now USES in fact.
I'm not entirely sure what your point is, most of the stuff Novell releases is GPL'd or otherwise open sourced.
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Another model that comes to mind is charging extra for the source and giving discounts for useful contribution
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http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/ChangeLog-2.6.24.4 [kernel.org]
- One warning message was fixed (but not a compiler warning if that was what you ment).
- Two problems with new gcc versions were fixed.
But I don't understand what is wrong with fixing small errors or warnings. I have seen old projects that produce so many warning messages that it is impossible to spot the dangerous warnings from there. I actually started fixing warnings from one of these programs and find out fatal errors that could h