Some development statistics for 2.6.27 [LWN.net]

Some development statistics for 2.6.27

Posted Oct 9, 2008 12:24 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946)
In reply to: Some development statistics for 2.6.27 by hppnq
Parent article: Some development statistics for 2.6.27

"Why the employers statistics? I can see that they are relevant to some people at some companies"

It is much more than that. Individuals can influence and promote the hardware vendors which contribute towards their operating system of choice compared to others who refuse to cooperate or actively work against it.

Customers who rely on support contracts from commercial distributions know who is likely to give them higher value by moving free software in the direction that they would like.

More importantly, given the increasingly high influence of commercial vendors in the world of free software, a better of understanding of the commercial ecosystem is critical to take advantage of our better strengths and address our weaknesses. It is statistics such as these that help us understand how Linux kernel is progressing in attracting the participation of embedded manufacturers which is an area of current interest. Overall, I and I am sure many others would as individuals find these stats important.

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Some development statistics for 2.6.27

Posted Oct 9, 2008 21:26 UTC (Thu) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link] (7 responses)

Individuals can influence and promote the hardware vendors which contribute towards their operating system of choice compared to others who refuse to cooperate or actively work against it.

That is exactly what I meant. It's the kind of conclusion you cannot draw from these statistics. There are many reasons for that, but let's take a very obvious one: how about out-of-tree drivers?

Customers who rely on support contracts from commercial distributions know who is likely to give them higher value by moving free software in the direction that they would like.

Again this is a remarkably strong statement, not in any way supported by the stats. Last time I looked, Free Software was still moved by the developers and not by the customers, if only because the Free Software "ecosystem" -- which seems to have replaced the ancient "community" -- contains a lot of other users and proponents of Free Software. Note that this is actually reflected in the stats for (even) the Linux kernel, more than fifteen years after it was started.

I am not complaining about the involvement of vendors and customers, but it would be interesting to see how many kernel hackers switched jobs in the middle of a project, or who started a project before joining a certain company, or worse, who perhaps stopped working on it after joining a certain company.

More importantly, given the increasingly high influence of commercial vendors in the world of free software, a better of understanding of the commercial ecosystem is critical to take advantage of our better strengths and address our weaknesses.

I would say that the biggest strength of Free Software is its almost complete independence of the whims of vendors and to me it would be difficult to find a weakness in it, in the absence of a specific goal other than world domination. ;-)

Some development statistics for 2.6.27

Posted Oct 9, 2008 23:53 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (6 responses)

"There are many reasons for that, but let's take a very obvious one: how about out-of-tree drivers?"

Depends on why they are out-of-tree. Is it code quality? licensing? The vendor supported drivers with proper licensing and good quality code tends to be in upstream Linux kernel.

"Last time I looked, Free Software was still moved by the developers and not by the customers"

Then you need to look again. For the Linux kernel (and several other successful projects), a large amount of code is driven by vendors which are representing customer requirements. This is part of the value that hardware vendors and commercial Linux distributions are offering. Also customers in some instances are directly participating in the development as well.

"I would say that the biggest strength of Free Software is its almost complete independence of the whims of vendors and to me it would be difficult to find a weakness in it, in the absence of a specific goal other than world domination. ;-)"

The views of vendors started to matter long since when they became participants. Influence is different from lock-in however. Besides, world-domination is indeed a goal and participation of embedded vendors or lack-of has been covered in many articles in LWN as well as reaching out to the needs of some of the Asian vendors including cultural differences so it is quite clear that the Linux world has a good understanding of the mutual benefit from vendor participation and has been working to address any short comings.

Some development statistics for 2.6.27

Posted Oct 10, 2008 11:45 UTC (Fri) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link] (5 responses)

If you would like to conclude anything about the Free Software market from these numbers, please knock yourself out. In the end, of course, it is not the statistics that are actually going to achieve world domination. It will still be the developers. It is their code. The great thing is, I can take it, and I can use it freely.

But by your reasoning, if a certain torvalds, cox, viro, mingo or davem (to name just a few) decide to go work for whitehouse.gov because of the lovely climate in DC, Linux might all of a sudden be an OS sponsored by the US government!

That's why I find these statistics and their interpretations amusing, nothing more, nothing less. It is certainly not rock solid science. But people will try to sell it like that, of course.

If you would simply look at the statistics for the last couple of releases, you would see that there is a quite limited number of recurring companies that by and large seem to contribute quite a bit, and that we all know, and a huge contribution that cannot be categorized at all. Although undoubtedly all kinds of companies are nowadays much more involved in some way in Linux kernel development, which is great, the process is still very much a triumphant example of Free Software development, which is greater.

Some development statistics for 2.6.27

Posted Oct 10, 2008 13:20 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (4 responses)

U.S government is already sponsoring Linux development to some extend - SELinux for example. That's a good thing. It is not just LWN but also others Linux Foundation publishing such statistics. Obviously people are finding them useful. If you don't, well then, feel free to ignore it.

Some development statistics for 2.6.27

Posted Oct 10, 2008 14:00 UTC (Fri) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link] (3 responses)

U.S government is already sponsoring Linux development to some extend - SELinux for example.

I don't see US government in the list, do you? You seem to miss the point though.

It is not just LWN but also others Linux Foundation publishing such statistics.

Why else would I raise the question? You should mention Novell also, because LWN, Novell and Linux Foundation all published the same results some time back. Here is the press release. Interesting read.

Obviously people are finding them useful.

Obviously.

Some development statistics for 2.6.27

Posted Oct 10, 2008 16:22 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (2 responses)

"I don't see US government in the list, do you?"

Not in this kernel release but reports looking at metrics over a longer period of time having mentioned this. Greg KH's talked about NSA sponsoring Xorg development as well. Those patches are part of the same SELinux effort.

http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/lpc_2008_keynote.html

"You seem to miss the point though"

You agree that others find it useful so I don't understand your opposition.

Some development statistics for 2.6.27

Posted Oct 11, 2008 16:47 UTC (Sat) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link] (1 responses)

My original point about the US government was not terribly difficult: if developer X leaves company A and joins B, what does that mean in terms of sponsorship of the projects involved? A somewhat related question would be: how does this influence statistics like the one given here? The added value of a publication like LWN, of which I am a customer, is to say something clever about this. But as I said, personally I am more interested in submit time statistics.

My other point was about the noble art of handwaving and the eagerness with which these statistics will be used to "prove" all kinds of things, some of which are not even present in the data, and I think you have illustrated that quite nicely: for instance, the fact that SELinux development also happens outside the scope of Linux kernel development is a nice example of the relative insignificance of these statistics.

Some development statistics for 2.6.27

Posted Oct 11, 2008 22:27 UTC (Sat) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

If a different company steps forward to sponsor the developers, then it shows they are interested in the development and want to influence it. These metrics are presented because they are often quite insightful especially if you are able to see the bigger picture over a period of time.

The single kernel release statistics are themselves useful as well but for other reasons. It is a matter of how well you use the data. If everybody worries about how things can be potentially misinterpreted, nothing will get done. Everything is aware that metrics such as these have that potential. Nothing new can be said about that.