There are many misconceptions about open source that many of us encounter, one of which is that open source developers are hobbyists working in the garage in the evenings and weekends. A recent report Linux Kernel Development: How Fast It is Going, Who is Doing It, What They are Doing, and Who is Sponsoring It from the Linux Foundation reports some statistics for GNU/Linux that may surprise many people.
Who develops Linux ?
This is really a massive development effort, something like 1,000 developers working for more than 100 different corporations. Most of these developers are being paid to work on Linux, it is estimated that between 70 and 95 percent of these developers are being paid for their work.
Who sponsors Linux ?
Many of the Linux developers are employed by major corporations including,
- Red Hat, 11.2 percent
- Novell, 8.9 percent
- IBM, 8.3 percent
- Intel, 4.1 percent
- LF, 3.5 percent
- SGI, 2.0 percent
- MIPS Technology, 1.6 percent
- Oracle, 1.3 percent
- MontaVista, 1.2 percent
- Linutronix, 1.0 percent.
How Fast is Linux Developed and Released?
Equally impressive, on average 3,621 lines of code are added to the kernel tree every day, and a new kernel is released approximately every 2.7 months. Since 2005, the kernel has been growing at a steady state of 10 percent per year.
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