| Who really writes Linux? |
Mar. 01, 2007
Linux Weekly News has just published one of the most interesting analysis pieces on Linux that I've seen in ages. In it, LWN executive editor Jonathan Corbet addresses the common misconception that Linux, and other major open-source projects, are maintained by volunteers.
Corbet's examination of who really has worked on the 2.6.20 kernel and on Linux over the last year is a real eye-opener.
He used a variety of scripts to look at who patched, added to, and edited Linux. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that Linux is not written by unpaid enthusiasts in basements. At most, by Corbet's calculations, 32.7 percent of the changes in the Linux 2.6.20 may have come from volunteers. The rest -- the vast majority -- was written by programmers working for companies.
To be exact, the company whose developers work the most on the latest kernel is Red Hat. I might add, it's not even close. By contributed changesets or lines of modified code, Red Hat's developers contributed 12.8 percent of the changes.
Other significant contributors, more than 2 percent, were, in order of contribution: IBM, Novell, the Linux Foundation (which employs Torvalds), Intel, and Oracle.
If you look at it in terms of lines of codes changed, then smaller companies begin to appear. In the listing by more than 2 percent of new lines of code, IBM again leads, followed by Astaro, a security company; the Linux Foundation; Qumranet, a stealth company that's behind the KVM (Kernel based Virtualization Machine); Novell; Intel; SANPeople, which focuses on serial to Ethernet connectivity; NetXen, a high-end network hardware vendor; Sony; Broadcom, the WiFi chip vendor; and Tensilica, a chip designer.
Get the picture? Linux and, I suspect, almost other mature open-source projects are written not by anti-social, open-source communists, as Microsoft's Steve Ballmer once had it. No, it's written by people who are either financially invested in it, or getting a pay-check for doing work on it. Open-source is alive and, well, a capitalist.
Another interesting pattern that Corbet found is that while it's clear that Linus Torvalds and Andrew Morton are vital to Linux, though more as code managers than as coders, it's also clear that maintainers of subsystem or architecture trees have more influence over what actually gets into Linux than one might think.
So, there you have it. Proof positive that open-source can work, be decentralized, and still fit perfectly into today's corporate world. Welcome to the 21st century.
-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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