WHO is developing Linux? Large enterprises?

WHO is developing Linux? Large enterprises? -- Linux general technology-Linux technology and application information. For details, refer to the following section. Many people mistakenly think that Linux is still written by a group of hackers who stay in their parents' bedroom all day. The only social activity is to play role-playing games online, or in IRC chat rooms, there is endless debate about Vi or Emacs which is better, or about who is Picard and who is so powerful. That's all.

Recently, the Linux Foundation released a report on the development of the Linux kernel, focusing on the development direction of the Linux kernel, the latest developments, how to do it, and who has contributed to the kernel. This report is mainly based on the development of the Linux kernel over the past three years. From 2.6.11 to 2.6.24, it is concluded that the main developers of Linux kernel development are sponsored by enterprises.

In more details, 70% to 95% of Linux developers in the past three years are paid for the development work of the Linux community. These fees are paid by enterprises, the report also states that more than 70% of kernel contributions are made by employees of the following companies: IBM, Intel, Linux Foundation, MIPS technology, NontaVista, Movial, NetApp, Novell, and Red Hat.

In the past three years, the number of Linux Kernel developers has also increased. In 2.6.11, only 483 people of code were eventually accepted into the Kernel. By 2.6.24, code of more than 1057 developers is accepted by kernel code monitoring personnel. In the past three years, a total of 3678 developers were accepted by the Linux kernel.

The report believes that even if the number of kernel developers increases significantly, the number of core developers who do the main work has not increased. In the past three years, the top 10 developers have completed nearly 15% of their work, and the top 30 developers have completed 30% of their work. In fact, the top five developers have completed nearly 8.5% of their work, including Al Viro (1.9% kernel code modifications), David Miller (1.8%), and Adrian Bunk (1.7% ); ralf Baechle (1.6%); and Andrew Morton (1.5% ).

Among all developers, 74.1% of developers are engaged in Linux-related work in their company, and 12.9% of developers are engaged in other occupations, and they contribute 10% of kernel development work, only the remaining 13.9% of developers use Linux kernel development as their hobbies.

As a hobby, Linux enthusiasts have made great contributions to the Linux kernel. However, enterprise developers are the main force in Linux development. According to their contributions to kernel development, these enterprises rank as follows:

1) Red Hat, 11.2 percent
2) Novell, 8.9 percent
3) IBM, 8.3 percent
4) Intel, 4.1 percent
5) LF, 3.5 percent
6) SGI, 2.0 percent
7) MIPS Technology, 1.6 percent
8) Oracle, 1.3 percent
9) MontaVista, 1.2 percent
10) Linutronix, 1.0 percent.

In addition, the role of consulting also contributed 2.5% to the Development of Linux.

The report was written by Jonathan Corbet, a Linux kernel developer and founder of LWN, Senior Linux kernel security expert Greg Kroah-Harman, and Amanda McPherson, marketing director of the Linux Foundation.
They also pointed out in this study that only a small part of the companies that contribute to Linux development are seen in the report. Through the long tail theory, the number of these companies is very large. At the same time, they also pointed out that these companies did not contribute to the Linux kernel. From many facts, we can see that these companies have improved the Linux kernel to make them more competitive in the market.

In addition to Linux distributions such as RedHat, Novell, and MontaVista, the report points out that their benefits are clearly driven because they promote Linux for better market share. Their Downstream vendors have spared no effort in contributing to the Linux kernel, such as IBM, Intel, SGI, MIPS, Freescale, and HP, because their hardware can be used with the Linux operating system to attract Linux users and increase their sales.

In addition to the above two types of IT enterprises, there are also consumer electronics manufacturers such as Sony, Nokia and Samsung who use various modified embedded Linux operating systems in their hardware products, such as TV set-top boxes, game consoles, cameras, and mobile phones. Their motivation to participate in Linux kernel development is also very simple. They can get the corresponding development direction of the Linux kernel, so as to provide a solid foundation for the development of their product software systems.

The study also pointed out that the current development of linux is not just about IT vendors. For example, the latest 2.6.25 kernel will contain the implementation of the PF_CAN (Controller Area Network, control domain Network firewall device) protocol, the implementation of these codes is done by developers of Volkswagen. PF_CAN enables trusted communication between components in a unified interface environment, such as various electronic devices in automobiles. The Linux community gave Volkswagen a good development platform so that they could implement their protocol code. At the same time, Volkswagen also found that, returning the code back to the Linux community is helpful for their technical improvements.

So far, the image of your Linux development engineers has changed, because now linux engineers are more like a full-time, middle-and upper-layer traditional software engineer, but why are there some rumors about Linux developers? McPherson believes that these problems are caused by a majority of people's understanding of the competing development model. This is very different from the previous model, because in the past, it seems that spending money allows employees to develop programs, so that competitors can use them for free and make profits from them is simply unimaginable. People can't stand out from the old circle, but as the research report points out, these companies that support open-source development are indeed making a profit, and this sharing-based R & D method will become more and more common, and soon, most people's minds will turn around and embrace this open-source development model.

Author: Steven J. Vaughan Nicolas