Fedora 9 Would Cost $10.8B To Build From Scratch 293
ruphus13 writes "The Linux Foundation's recently released report claims, '... it would take approximately $10.8 billion to build the Linux community distribution Fedora 9 in today's dollars with today's software development costs.' The article states why this might actually understate the value of the distros, though, since it doesn't include the power of the brand and the goodwill value. 'There were several approaches that the Linux Foundation employed to reach the $10.8 billion dollar figure, including calculating the number of lines of code in Fedora 9 (204,500,946), and using an average programmer's salary of $75,662.08 — as determined by the US Department of Labor — to measure development costs ... On the balance sheets of Coca Cola and many other huge corporations, you find goodwill listed as a major asset.'"
Re:Average salary? (Score:4, Interesting)
You make $3.78/hr ?
Where I live people who make $75k have to live in an apartment, and it is unlikely they will be approved for a home loan without at least 30% down (around $150k). If you save aggressively on that sort of salary it should only take about 5-7 years to scrap together enough money for your down payment. Once you have the house, I'm not sure how you pay the mortgage (roughly $3k/month).
For you it will take closer to 70 years.
Reliable numbers? (Score:1, Interesting)
I don't mean to sound cynical, but this calculation seems about as contrived as the RIAA's "billions lost to piracy" numbers. $11 billion?
Also, if that's all it cost, why hasn't Microsoft made Linux yet?
Re:Grinding (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Average salary? (Score:3, Interesting)
No necessarily to the parent, but the GP, there are places in the US where you can live very comfortable on $50-$75k per year. Mostly smaller towns 100-150 miles from major metropolitan areas. I'm thinking Chicago's Rockford, or Elgin. Or any of the various industrialized suburbs of Milwaukee, or Brookfield, WI, or similar towns.
Take out an FHA loan on a cheap property, something that needs a lot of love, and put in the work yourself (that way you *know* the value will go up; it's not appreciating, its sweat equity!).
$50-75k is a very good salary in some areas, particularly if you aren't keeping up the Jones, and don't mind doing work around the house (probably a lot).
Re:Average salary? (Score:2, Interesting)
There was that study a couple of years ago that showed that top programmers are 4x as productive as the average ones.
So hire a bunch of top programmers and pay 'em twice that rate, and you'll still halve development costs.
Of course, if the guys in charge of The Linux Foundation's estimation were actually top programmers, they'd have relized this. But noooooooo, they're trying to rhetorically prove a point.
I suppose if you hired 4x as many crappy programmers for half that rate, you can pay $20 billion to develop Fedora 9.
Re:Uh, Goofy Accounting (Score:1, Interesting)
I want my Salary to increase. Bring on these ridiculous numbers.
One thing I don't understand about you free-software guys, sure Linux is great, but a lot of Microsoft's tactics are why your salary is above other fields (and why some of it went overseas sure), but if everything is free why would anyone pay you a dime?
Being a Sys-Admin is a shit-job. I would much rather get paid to do creative development instead of Constantly NMapping my network for security holes or changing friggen Passwords. ugh. I read as many Tech documents as a Doctor reads medical brochures but get paid a 1/4th as much. My job is harder than any of the bozos I went to college with who had 'Business' degrees, and a lot of them are on par with my salary.
I didnt do computer work simply for the pay, but now that I've been out of college a while, it certainly irritates the hell out of me that pay-grades are actually coming Down in my field. Microsoft for life. Free software can eat my ass.
(and don't say because the software is free there is more money to spend on the Staff, because that has never been true in any office I have ever worked in, I think All our software costs for an entire year are less than 50 grand, and at a large corp, it will be more, but you have a much larger staff)
Re:Average salary? (Score:3, Interesting)
As I wander around San Francisco, I see people living in some pretty squalid housing. I think to myself, "that's a 2 million dollar property? How? And how does that guy manage it?"
I get the impression that there might be affordable housing in San Francisco, though not the really desirable kind of housing that goes for $1000 per square foot.
I could be wrong, but then, the market still bears ridiculous pricing. It means you either need equity in the market, or it means that enough people have enough income to saturate the housing market.
I love the Bay Area, but there are only a few parts that I think I want to live in. I'm amused by the real estate in San Fran because I know of a time when some of the 10 million dollar victorians were considered "ghetto" and were difficult to sell at any price.
There are people who move to the Bay Area as an end in itself. I would move there if I could consider it a benefit of having a job or a business that earned enough that the expense of living there was not my most significant concern. On the other hand, I think my resumé allows me to say things like that to recruiters :-)
Meanwhile, I'll settle for an Irish Coffee at the Buena Vista and a Tikka Masala at India Curry House, and then leave the City for my relatively low cost of living home. The Bay Area doesn't want me so badly that it's willing to make it look cheap, so why in the hell would I move there? If the best I could do was $75K, I'm pretty sure I'd make a priority of getting out of there.
Re:Imagine... (Score:1, Interesting)
Open source works precisely because of free will, not coercion. It is the principle of voluntary association that makes it all happen. Open source programmers, users, and other participants have adopted the open source model because they chose to purely out of free will.
Government, in contrast, is founded on the principle of coercion. Everything and anything government does is, at the root, achieved through government's special right to employ coercion as a means. How could this possibly benefit the established model of pure openness which is open source? Forcing a person to fund, contribute to, use, or otherwise support open source software isn't just immoral, it's completely backwards and opposite to how open source works.
The worst thing that could happen to open source is to inject coercion into the system, because coercion has no place in the system. No thanks, government is large and powerful enough as it is without taking on yet another funding, spending, and enforcement scheme.