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Date: July 28, 2004 12:02:49 GMT+03:00
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Subject: LINUX - Now a corporate beast - Market Acceptance from ISV's
http://gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/26641-1.html
07/19/04
Linux now a corporate beast
By Joab Jackson
GCN Staff
Dispelling the perception that Linux is cobbled together by a large
cadre of lone hackers working in isolation, the individual in charge of
managing the Linux kernel said that most Linux improvements now come
from corporations.
“People’s stereotype [of the typical Linux developer] is of a male
computer geek working in his basement writing code in his spare time,
purely for the love of his craft. Such people were a significant force
up until about five years ago,” said Andrew Morton, whose role is
maintaining the Linux kernel in its stable form.
Morton said contributions from such enthusiasts, “is waning.” Instead,
most code is generated by programmers punching the corporate time clock.
About 1,000 developers contribute changes to Linux on a regular basis,
Morton said. Of those 1,000 developers, about 100 are paid to work on
Linux by their employers. And those 100 have contributed about 37,000 of
the last 38,000 changes made to the operating system. Morton spoke last
week at a meeting sponsored by the Forum on Technology and Innovation, a
semi-regular meeting to address technology-related issues held by Sen.
John Ensign (R-Nev.), Sen. Ron Wyden (D- Ore.) and the Council on
Competitiveness.
The meeting in Washington was on the policy implications of open-source
software. One concern raised is whether Linux can offer a high level of
security—and not entangle users in intellectual property issues—even
though it is being developed almost exclusively by volunteers.
Earlier this year, the SCO Group Inc. of Lindon, Utah, requested that
the Energy Department pay SCO licensing fees for its use of Linux,
claiming that some of SCO’s proprietary code was leaked into Linux (See
GCN).
Since Linux is an open-source project, anybody is free to submit changes
to the core development team. The team reviews the proposed changes and
incorporates into the kernel those they find to their liking.
Even though anyone can submit changes, rarely does good code come from
just anyone. Morton noted that it is rare that a significant change
would be submitted from someone who is completely unknown to the core
developers. And all submitted code is inspected by other members of the
group, so it is unlikely some malicious function may be secretly
embedded in Linux.
Far from being a project with a vast numbers of contributors, about half
of those 37,000 changes are made by core developer team of about 20
individuals, Morton said.
Morton gave a detailed profile of the Linux development community to
meeting attendees, many of whom were Senate staffers.
There are still a fair number of independent developers working on Linux
in their spare time, even though the number of changes they submit is
shrinking, Morton said.
A few also come from the Open Source Developer Labs, a nonprofit
organization sponsored by companies such as Intel Corp. of Santa Clara,
Calif., and Hewlett-Packard Co. of Palo Alto, Calif., specifically to
develop Linux for large-scale production environments. Linux creator
Linus Torvalds works for OSDL.
But Linux is increasingly developed by a small pool of
corporate-sponsored developers. These are programmers hired by companies
such as IBM Corp., Red Hat Inc., and SGI. In most cases, they split
their time between in-house projects and time devoted to developing the
Linux kernel.
Since these companies base some of their products and services on Linux,
it is beneficial for them to have someone who is familiar with the
operating system, Morton said. Also, if these companies modify Linux for
their own products, it is in their best interest to see that those
changes are incorporated back into the public kernel. If a
company-developed feature is incorporated into Linux, that feature will
be maintained by all of the Linux community, rather than just being the
responsibility of the vendor.
Further characterizing Linux’s volunteer development team, Morton said
open source “does tend to attract the very best developers,” individuals
who are “miles ahead of regular developers.” Most of the developers live
in the United States, Europe and Australia. The Eastern European
countries are increasingly involved, though participation from Asian and
Latin American developers remains rare, he said.
Morton’s observations were verified by other panelists.
“The person in the basement is a rare bird now,” said Morgan Reed, vice
president of public affairs for the Association for Competitive
Technology.
Reed said Linux generated $2.5 billion in related products and services
in 2003.
IBM & Linux - Real Experience, Real Solutions, Real Time
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