Resources assigned to a Linux distro

I do not have specific information as to how many paid manhours Red Hat invests into Fedora or to the open source ecosystem in a broader sense. I think its noteworthy information, but I don't have access to it. There are certainly paid positions that Red Hat staffs for the Fedora project such as infrastructure and release management but I don't have a complete listing as to who is directly tasked with doing work inside Fedora as part of their day-job as it relates to job description or job performance evaluations.

Nor do I know how much personal time Red Hat employees invests off-the-clock as volunteers in open development more broadly. How much of the kernel work that is attributed to Red Hat is done on personal time by a Red Hat employee? Hard question. I suspect such volunteer time investment its significant up and down the open software stack where Red Hat is paying for people to do upstream development. I suspect further that sort of effect is a general effect for everyone who is paid specifically to develop open source solutions regardless of employer (as compared to people who choose to develop open solutions as part of their work even when their employer hasn't stated a preference).

I break-out Red Hat "maintainers" in my analysis only because Red Hat holds a special position in the Fedora project make-up and its important to try to understand where project momentum is and the role of independent contributors. Even when I try to lump all Red Hat employees together regardless of how much paid time they spend on Fedora..the momentum in the contributor base is in the external community segment...and that's very good to see..as the world outside the Red Hat fence line is the bigger potential pool of contributors than the one inside. That being said, I seriously doubt most of those 250+ Red Hat employees are tasked as part of their dayjob to maintain any Fedora packages, but by assuming its all paid time I create a conservative estimate for volunteer growth. Conservative estimates are good.

If you have suggestions on enhancing the methodology I'm using...I'm all ears.

-jef