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ControversialControversialPosted Sep 18, 2008 1:06 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1)In reply to: LPC: Fitting into the kernel ecosystem by Burgundavia Parent article: LPC: Fitting into the kernel ecosystem Of course it's controversial. I was just reporting on what he said, though. What else do you think I should have done? I have expressed other opinions about Ubuntu elsewhere; I didn't feel the need to inject that into Greg's talk.
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Controversial Posted Sep 18, 2008 1:52 UTC (Thu) by jengelh (subscriber, #33263) [Link]
What timeframe does the statistic table span?
Controversial Posted Sep 18, 2008 2:00 UTC (Thu) by willy (subscriber, #9762) [Link]
The analysis is for the past 3 years
Controversial Posted Sep 18, 2008 2:03 UTC (Thu) by tseaver (subscriber, #1544) [Link]
Perhaps it would have been useful to note Greg's employer, as a tool to help readers evaluate his possible bias (I didn't know offhand that he was a Novell employee, for instance, untill reading mdz's followup).
First slide Posted Sep 18, 2008 7:30 UTC (Thu) by alex (subscriber, #1355) [Link]
I'd of thought his email on the first slide gave it away. And anyway he's showing the numbers even when Novell doesn't come up as high as certain distros.
First slide Posted Sep 21, 2008 0:27 UTC (Sun) by frazier (guest, #3060) [Link]
If you saw the slides you'd seen the suse.de email on the first slide, but if you were an LWN.net subscriber who read the article and didn't read the comments, you wouldn't have known the rest of the story. I like to think that the comments section is additional info, and not a place to be visited for a notable piece of the story that is missing.
First slide Posted Sep 22, 2008 0:50 UTC (Mon) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
I agree, it's unusual for a LWN piece to be this one-sided.
Re: Controversial Posted Sep 18, 2008 2:03 UTC (Thu) by mmcgrath (subscriber, #44906) [Link]
No worries corbet, you did right by the write up as far as I can see. Though it is natural that the Canonical folk would want to save face. One day they'll learn, patches speak louder then words.
Re: Controversial Posted Sep 18, 2008 11:40 UTC (Thu) by mkflint (guest, #50223) [Link]
> patches speak louder than words
Yes they do! But so does artwork, integration, innovation, documentation, marketing, blah blah blah.
The primary goals, as I see them, are to create a great quality product and to increase usage of Free Software. And the kernel is just one part of that whole experience.
While each individual kernel developer has a preferred distro, the project as a whole should be distro-agnostic. I hope Greg KH made it clear that he was speaking as "Greg KH", and not as "Linux Kernel Representative".
Re: Controversial Posted Sep 24, 2008 0:02 UTC (Wed) by daniel (subscriber, #3181) [Link]
I find GregKH's statement overtly offensive with no possible excuse. And just to be clear, I am not aligned with any Linux Vendor. However, such ill considered public behavior reflects poorly on Suse, not just GregKH.
Regards,
Daniel
Re: Controversial Posted Sep 24, 2008 1:46 UTC (Wed) by mmcgrath (subscriber, #44906) [Link]
So you're saying he's right, he's wrong or that he just shouldn't be expressing his opinions / organizing metrics?
Re: Controversial Posted Sep 24, 2008 3:46 UTC (Wed) by daniel (subscriber, #3181) [Link]
I am saying you are wrong to applaud that sort of antisocial behavior.
Regards,
Daniel
Re: Controversial Posted Sep 25, 2008 14:05 UTC (Thu) by SEMW (guest, #52697) [Link]
> "patches speak louder then words"
True, but I do wonder how many patches Canonical GregKH feels would speak loud enough.
Canonical has ~130 employees; Novell has ~4100. So, considering the table for kernel contributions at the top, this works out at ~0.77 patches per employee for Canonical, and ~1.77 for Novell; a touch under 2.5 times as many.
But now consider that SuSE Linux has been around since 1994*, and Ubuntu, since 2004. That's around... Well, 2.5 times as long.
So it seems to me that Canonical doesn't actually do too badly out of the comparison.
* I am assuming that the table at the top doesn't distinguish between contributions from Novell SUSE and S.u.S.E.
(I admit that that's a slightly dodgy calculation, in that neither Novell nor S.u.S.E will have had anything like 4100 employees in 1994 -- but then, neither will Canonical have had 130 in 2004. I'm not aiming for a scientific comparison, only pointing out that presenting the raw numbers with no context of company size, as Greg did, is rather disingenuous).
Re: Controversial Posted Feb 1, 2011 14:09 UTC (Tue) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164) [Link]
Those numbers don't make much sense - most of Novell doesn't have anything to do with SUSE. The SUSE labs have about 500 employees, I believe - then there is some marketing and sales. That is surely 5-6 times what Canonical has, in total - but far from 130 vs 4100.
Disclaimer: I work for SUSE/Novell.
Controversial Posted Sep 18, 2008 3:31 UTC (Thu) by Burgundavia (guest, #25172) [Link]
My comment was that other people have pointed out that Greg's analysis is flawed well before he made this speech. I suggest Ben Collin's (head of the Canonical server team) post: http://blog.phunnypharm.org/2008/07/canonical-and-linux-k...
And for the record, I don't work for Canonical.
Controversial Posted Sep 18, 2008 6:51 UTC (Thu) by mdz@debian.org (subscriber, #14112) [Link]
Factual correction: Ben Collins is not the head of the Canonical server team.
Controversial Posted Sep 19, 2008 6:15 UTC (Fri) by nealmcb (subscriber, #20740) [Link]
Correct. Rather, Ben Collins leads the Canonical Kernel Team.
Controversial Posted Sep 19, 2008 16:52 UTC (Fri) by mdz@debian.org (subscriber, #14112) [Link] That's not quite correct either. Pete Graner now leads the Canonical Kernel Team.
Controversial Posted Sep 18, 2008 15:41 UTC (Thu) by frazier (guest, #3060) [Link]
> What else do you think I should have done?
I completely agree with another response to your comment, that it should have been obvious that the speaker works for a different distribution. In the future, please note who they're working for!
Also, I don't know if they were available at the time of article publication, but a link to presentation slides would be handy and appreciated:
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