Linux: Too Much of a Good Thing?
The transformation of the Linux Foundation from a rather sleepy, peripheral player into one of the main voices for open source has been fascinating to watch. It's certainly welcome, too, because one of the problems of Linux in particular, and open source in general, is that the distributed production has tended to lead to dissipation in terms of getting the message across.
Now, in addition to a useful series of interviews with open source luminaires, the Linux Foundation is getting into surveys:The Linux Foundation (LF), the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced it is publishing a new report written by kernel developers Jonathan Corbet and Greg Kroah-Hartman, and LF Director of Marketing Amanda McPherson.
The report titled “Linux Kernel Development: How Fast is it Going, Who is doing it and Who is Sponsoring it?” is available today. The paper finds that over the last three years the number of developers contributing to the kernel has tripled and that there has been a significant increase in the number of companies supporting kernel development.
Even though Linux has achieved near-ubiquity as a technology platform powering Internet applications, corporate servers, embedded and mobile devices and desktops, mainstream users know very little about how Linux is actually developed. This community paper exposes those dynamics and describes a large and distributed developer and corporate community that supports the expansion and innovation of the Linux kernel. The Linux kernel has become a common resource developed on a massive scale by companies who are fierce competitors in other areas.
Among its findings:o Every Linux kernel is being developed by nearly 1,000 developers working for more than 100 different corporations. This is the foundation for the largest distributed software development project in the world.
o Since 2005, the number of active kernel developers has tripled, reflecting the growing importance of Linux in the embedded systems, server, and desktop markets.
o Between 70 and 95 percent of those developers are being paid for their work, dispelling the “hobbyist” myth present from the start of open source development.
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o More than 70 percent of total contributions to the kernel come from developers working at a range of companies including IBM, Intel, The Linux Foundation, MIPS Technology, MontaVista, Movial, NetApp, Novell and Red Hat. These companies, and many others, find that by improving the kernel they have a competitive edge in their markets.
But one result seems slightly worrying to me:
o An average of 3,621 lines of code are added to the kernel tree every day, and a new kernel is released approximately every 2.7 months.
o The kernel, since 2005, has been growing at a steady state of 10 percent per year.
Surely that means that Linux is steadily becoming more and more bloated? I've always been of the view that one of Linux's great virtues is leanness, especially compared to a Certain Other operating system. While change can be good, I don't think that more is necessarily is better when it comes to lines of code. Perhaps the Linux Foundation's next project could be to study how much of the kernel could be trimmed away to return it to its earlier, svelte self.
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