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I have written frequently on my own web site (see link in panel to right) about the way IT leaders have co-opted the open-source movement in order to provide open choice. In fact, a subset of my research appeared on ebizQ in January and that's how I ended up writing this blog. Now I notice that LWN.net has really peeled back the details on this trend, particularly as it relates to the Linux kernel.

As you read the article, you can see the various comprehensive methodologies and perspectives taken by "corbet" in the analysis. The bottom line, after Red Hat and "truly volunteer," the big contributors to Linux 2.6.20 are--no surprise--IBM, Google, Oracle, HP, and the Linux Foundation (sponsored by the same big companies; see my January 24 post under OSS Culture, also link from panel to right) along with Novell, the University of Aberdeen, Nokia, Sony, Intel, and SGI. The actual rank differs depending on what is being measured but the names are pretty common across the measurements.

The article calculates that, despite conventional wisdom about guys in their attics pounding out code, no more than 33% of the latest Linux kernel was produced in that manner (and this revision is 700,000 lines larger than the last). In fact, that calculation assumes--for argument's sake--that all the unknowns are volunteers but it is just as likely that all the unknowns split in the same proportion as the knowns, which would mean only about 10%-15% of Linux is now being written by this generation's Linuses.

Posted by dennisb in OSS Development |Digg This|Add to del.icio.us

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