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Open Source Linux

Who Writes Linux and Open Source Software? (theregister.com) 60

Posted by EditorDavid from the devs-identified dept.
From an opinion piece in the Register: Aiven, an open source cloud data platform company, recently analyzed who's doing what with GitHub open source code projects. They found that the top open source contributors were all companies — Amazon Web Services, Intel, Red Hat, Google, and Microsoft....

Aiven looked at three metrics within the GitHub archives. These were the number of contributors, repositories (projects) contributed to, and the number of commits made by the contributors. These were calculated using Google Big Query analysis of PushEvents on public GitHub data. The company found that Microsoft and Google were neck-and-neck for the top spot. Red Hat is in third place, followed by Intel, then AWS, just ahead of IBM.... Red Hat is following closely behind and is currently contributing more commits than Google, with 125,012 in Q4 2022 compared to Google's 94,961. Microsoft is ahead of both, with 128,247 commits. However, regarding contributed staff working on projects, Google is leading the way with 5,757 compared to Microsoft's 5,513 and Red Hat's 3,656....

Heikki Nousiainen, Aiven CTO and co-founder, commented: "An unexpected result of our research was seeing Amazon overtake IBM to become the fifth biggest contributor." They "came late to the open source party, but they're now doubling down on its open source commitments and realizing the benefits that come with contributing to the open source projects its customers use." So, yes, open source certainly started with individual contributors, but today, and for many years before, it's company employees that are really making the code....

Aiven is far from the only one to have noticed that companies are now open source's economic engine. Jonathan Corbet, editor-in-chief of Linux Weekly News (LWN), found in his most recent analysis of Long Term Support Linux Kernel releases from 5.16 to 6.1 that a mere 7.5 percent of the kernel development, as measured by lines changed, came from individual developers. No, the real leaders were, in order: AMD; Intel; Google; Linaro, the main Arm Linux development organization; Meta; and Red Hat.
The article also includes this thought-provoking quote from Aiven CTO's. "Innovation is at the heart of the open source community, but without a strong commitment from companies, the whole system will struggle.

"We can see that companies are recognizing their role and supporting all who use open source."
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Who Writes Linux and Open Source Software? More

Who Writes Linux and Open Source Software?

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  • Probably not struggle (Score:5, Insightful)

    by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Sunday February 26, 2023 @03:58PM (#63324836) Journal

    "Innovation is at the heart of the open source community, but without a strong commitment from companies, the whole system will struggle."

    The companies are adding the things they want, not what individual developers want.

    Without their input, they won't get the things they want, but I will still get the things I want.

    • The companies are adding the things they want, not what individual developers want.

      Speak for yourself. I have seen many of the contributions by Redhat, Google, etc., and they are things I want and appreciate very much.

    • It's good to have the companies support with drivers for their hardware. True, independent developers could write those provided they got good documentation, but still, it's really great to get a new laptop and have practically everything working out of the box. Minus the WiFi, but that's because I installed a system with an older kernel, one update (with a docking station with rj45) later and all was fine.

      • It's good to have the companies support with drivers for their hardware.

        Yeah, that's true.

        it's really great to get a new laptop and have practically everything working out of the box. Minus the WiFi, but that's because I installed a system with an older kernel,

        Which laptop?

        • It's an HP Pavilion Aero 13" with a Ryzen APU, total weight below 1kg, if you want the exact model number I'd have to check it. BTW the fingerprint sensor also didn't work under Linux, but I can live without. From memory, fan speed and various lm_sensors things also don't work. Nothing that prevents one from using it.
          • Wow, that's kind of great. That laptop would be on my mental list of laptops that wouldn't work under Linux.
    • the dropbox links to the graphics. lolololol, that got me giggling mad.

  • Why are they counted twice?

    • Re:Isn't IBM a subsidiary of Redhat now? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Sunday February 26, 2023 @04:47PM (#63324922)

      Why are they counted twice?

      It's owned by IBM but still run as a separate organization (with Red Hat in their email address).

      And they aren't counted twice as much as they're counted separately. The main article is weirdly devoid of sources, but if you count IBM and Red Hat together for the Kernel contributor lists at the end they jump up the rankings significantly.

      • Why are they counted twice?

        It's owned by IBM but still run as a separate organization (with Red Hat in their email address).

        And they aren't counted twice as much as they're counted separately. The main article is weirdly devoid of sources, but if you count IBM and Red Hat together for the Kernel contributor lists at the end they jump up the rankings significantly.

        It's an old carnival trick. Like Forbes' Richest People in America List, where the five (seven?) Walton siblings' wealth was counted as a single entity to push "them" waaay up in the standings. Carlos Slim and Chinese real estate developers were breathing down their neck, so Forbes played fast and loose with the truth. But that's OK, it's patriotic, and everyone gets a car.

  • Not really surprised (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Powercntrl ( 458442 ) on Sunday February 26, 2023 @04:16PM (#63324866) Homepage

    People need to earn a living. In Star Trek, people worked for free because all your basic needs were otherwise taken care of. In the real world, your living situation rapidly deteriorates if you can't make your mortgage/rent payments. There's only so many people who are willing to spend their free time doing a thankless job that doesn't pay. It's no surprise big companies who have come to rely on open source software have picked up the slack.

    • Re:Not really surprised (Score:5, Informative)

      by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Sunday February 26, 2023 @04:58PM (#63324944)

      I remember getting in a couple arguments with individuals here over this - they were convinced that the Linux kernel was still mostly maintained by volunteers. But, thing is, the changelog doesn't support this. Many entries are quite obvious - email addresses from @redhat etc. In other cases, at first glance it's just a person's name... but a quick web search shows kernel development is their paid job.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by computer_tot ( 5285731 )
      People don't "work for free" in Star Trek. The original series, TNG, and DS9 all clearly point out that people earn a wage and both humans and aliens make references to working to make a living wage. We usually don't see people in the Star Trek main cast use money because they're crew on a ship. The military/fleet is providing everything for them on the ship. There are no vendors from whom they can purchase goods.

      But when they go to a station or planet they occasionally encounter scenarios where they ne
      • *golf clap*

      • I skipped a few filler episodes, but I'm almost done rewatching DS9 and I don't recall ever seeing Starfleet personnel pay Quark for anything. This doesn't mean it doesn't happen, but maybe there's some other kind of agreement in place there where they have an allowance.

        • There was an episode of TNG where Riker mentions he's owed gambling debt by Quark.

          In DS9 you routinely see star fleet personnel gambling. And as Quark shows to the Wadi, nobody gambles for free.

          Although, the Sisko kid does need to go to Nog for money in an auction because he doesn't have any.

      • Re:Not really surprised (Score:4, Informative)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Monday February 27, 2023 @10:52AM (#63326648) Homepage Journal

        That's not the case. In the TNG era much of the Federation no longer uses money. In the season 1 episode "The Neutral Zone", Picard explains to a 21st century human that his bank account is probably long gone and people don't pursue the accumulation of wealth anymore. There are many other examples of civilians on Earth not needing to pay for anything, such as Joseph Sisko's restaurant not having a till or any for of payment.

        DS9 is run by the Federation, but there are many non-Federation citizens there who do use money. The Starfleet staff who live and visit there can claim an allowance so that they can buy things, but it's not a wage. It's explained more in the novels, and unfortunately not so much on screen. IIRC everyone gets the same allowance, with no accounting for rank.

        For Federation citizens, money is just another tool that they use to interact with societies and individuals who still use it, and it is allocated on the same basis as other resources. Joseph Sisko runs a restaurant because it brings him joy to prepare and serve non-replicated food, not because he needs the money.

        • Picard explains to a 21st century human that his bank account is probably long gone and people don't pursue the accumulation of wealth anymore.

          This is obviously better, but what motivates them to keep working then?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jma05 ( 897351 )

        TNG S01E26 - Ralph Offenhouse, a thawed man from in the 20th century laments

        Ralph Offenhouse:
        There's no trace of my money.
        My office is gone.
        What will I do? How will I live?

        Piccard:
        This is the 24th century.
        Material needs no longer exist.

        Ralph Offenhouse:
        Then what's the challenge?

        Piccard:
        The challenge, Mr. Offenhouse,
        is to improve yourself.
        To enrich yourself.
        Enjoy it. ....................

        This is not to say people always worked for free, but that work was not necessary. So yes, "basic needs were otherwise take

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        People don't "work for free" in Star Trek. The original series, TNG, and DS9 all clearly point out that people earn a wage and both humans and aliens make references to working to make a living wage. We usually don't see people in the Star Trek main cast use money because they're crew on a ship. The military/fleet is providing everything for them on the ship. There are no vendors from whom they can purchase goods.

        But when they go to a station or planet they occasionally encounter scenarios where they need t

    • Open-source "contributions" are generally judged by the usefullness of the contribution, NOT AT ALL by the number of git commits. Some git commits are purposely broken down into multiple individualized sections to make them more readable and their changes easier for peer review purposes. Some very small one-liner commits can make huge differences (usually performance optimizations and bug fixes) and would be a pimple on the face of Microsoft's 128,000 commits.

      As a supporter of FOSS I am glad that companie

  • Generally the people using it for work (Score:3)

    by Goatbot ( 7614062 ) on Sunday February 26, 2023 @04:43PM (#63324912)
    If you need it to do what you need it to do then you either wait for the code or pay for the code.

  • Maybe when I retire (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Sunday February 26, 2023 @04:55PM (#63324934) Homepage

    Obviously, big companies use OSS, and they have to contribute, in order to get the features they want. This is actually all good...

    I admire the private contributors, though. If I were 25 again, I could see contributing just for fun. Now? Too many obligations, never enough time. Maybe when I retire...

  • Measuring commits is a weak indicator, just because the metric is lazily achieved doesn't mean it's the best possible.

    • Seems like what you really need to do is count commits which aren't replaced for significant periods, weighted by how many people are actually using the code

  • And makes private updates, then wants to merge public contributions, would that violate the licensing terms? How does that work?

    If it would violate some license, wouldn't that explain said "benevolence"? Serious question, I never really got up to speed on the specifics of the different licenses. It just struck me that there must be some reason that companies are doing this, because companies are wholly self-interested and this piece makes it seem like there is some benevolence at work here, which is nonsen

    • And makes private updates, then wants to merge public contributions, would that violate the licensing terms? How does that work?

      If it would violate some license, wouldn't that explain said "benevolence"? Serious question, I never really got up to speed on the specifics of the different licenses. It just struck me that there must be some reason that companies are doing this, because companies are wholly self-interested and this piece makes it seem like there is some benevolence at work here, which is nonsense.

      If you have changes you want to make to a project, and are willing to make those changes yourself, you have two choices: (1) you can make a private copy of the project which you can change as you see fit, or (2) you can make the changes to the public copy,

      There are advantages and disadvantages to both choices. If you keep your changes private you don't have to persuade anyone of the value of your changes, but you take full responsibility for the fork. You must keep it up-to-date with security fixes and new features. To some extent you can get guidance from the original project, but that becomes less and less effective the further you depart from it.

      If you choose to make your changes public you must convince the other maintainers of the project that your changes are generally beneficial. This might require compromising on the design in ways that don't add value for you. If you can overcome that burden the maintenance of the improved project is shared with the rest of the community, reducing your long-term costs. However, now everybody gets to make use of your improvements, which benefits your competitors.

      • This makes me wonder if a company has ever tried to form a sort of coupe of leadership by supplanting it's own people in an open source project

        Thanks for your reply!

        • This makes me wonder if a company has ever tried to form a sort of coupe of leadership by supplanting it's own people in an open source project

          Thanks for your reply!

          If the company has the resources to completely take over the maintenance and improvement of the software, they can simply do that. If the original author objects that the project is moving in a direction he does not like, they can fork the project and continue their maintenance only on it. Users of the product will gravitate to the fork because it has better maintenance.

          I am not sure of my facts, but I wouldn't be surprised if this is what happened to OpenOffice. LibreOffice started as a fork of OpenOffi

    • Re:If a company forks a distro.. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Sunday February 26, 2023 @05:49PM (#63325022)

      It just struck me that there must be some reason that companies are doing this, because companies are wholly self-interested and this piece makes it seem like there is some benevolence at work here, which is nonsense.

      It's not hard to find - the motivation is profit, pure and simple. Before IBM bought them out, Red Hat made all its money selling support subscriptions and consulting. IBM sells lots of products that heavily use FOSS software underneath - if they didn't have developers working on that code, their products would devolve into a buggy insecure mess.

      Even companies like CloudLinux, who stepped to the plate when IBM shafted us regarding CentOS - their livelihoods depend on selling products based on this "free" software. I'm sure at least part of the reason they are spending money on AlmaLinux is they expect it to bring them new business. BTW let me say again - THANK YOU CloudLinux!

      Additionally, lots of individual developers get salaries from companies that aren't in the "Linux business" per se, but depend on particular pieces of software to operate - Apache, MariaDB, and so on. Those developers have their employers' blessing to spend some percentage of their time on moving the software forward.

      And, to be clear... there is nothing intrinsically wrong with any of that!

    • It just struck me that there must be some reason that companies are doing this, because companies are wholly self-interested and this piece makes it seem like there is some benevolence at work here, which is nonsense.

      Linux is successful today because of the license. Many of the original pre-corporate contributors explicitly stated that they chose to contribute to Linux and not to one of the *BSDs because of the GPL. And it has also worked brilliantly for corporate contributions because none of them want to see their contributions wind up in someone else's walled garden, either. Linux is proof positive that the GPL is the best license around.

  • I always find it so funny when a journalist refers to a company as if it was a singular person. Open Source is written by individuals who chose to work on open source instead of software with (in general) more potential to bring in money.

    It's not too surprising that the people who spend the most time on open source are the people being paid to write open source, is it?

    • Linux Mint is people!

  • That'll put a few noses out of joint. I wonder what OS the "M$ is evil" crowd will go to now.

    • I wonder what OS the "M$ is evil" crowd will go to now.

      OpenBSD

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by guruevi ( 827432 )

        Perhaps unsurprisingly, but a lot of the BSD bugfix work is done by embedded/appliance device manufacturers. Dell, Apple, Netflix, ...

  • Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2347/ [xkcd.com]

  • The press constantly struggle with the fact that Open Source is intended to be written by the people who use it. These companies use it, and the contribute not in cash but in the code that they put back in.

    This is what is supposed to happen- it's not a shock, it's barely even news.

  • This become a lot less of the RMS's communist vision an more of a capitalist game theory practice.

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