Just noticed this interesting blog that considers the question who writes Linux? And which companies have done most to support it? Answers are provided by the Linux Foundation.On the Intel Software Network, Dawn M. Foster writes:
I was excited to see that the Linux Foundation just released an update to their Linux kernel study. This study has some interesting insights into the work that goes into each revision of the kernel along with some information about the people and companies supporting this work.You can read the full document (PDF) - Linux Kernel Development (How Fast it is Going, Who is Doing It, What They are Doing, and Who is Sponsoring It: An August 2009 Update)
For example, there are 4-5 kernel releases per year and recent releases have contained over 9000 changes (patches) per release, which breaks down to 4-6 changes to the kernel per hour. The most recent kernel in the study had over 11 million lines of code. This is a huge effort, especially for something that started off as a little hobby.
In summary...
Kernel Version 2.6.11 contains 17,090 files and 6,624,076 lines of code
The top five idividuals contributing changes:
Name, Number of Changes, %age of Total Changes
David S. Miller, 2,239, 1.5%
Ingo Molnar, 2,125, 1.5%
Al Viro, 1,981, 1.4%
Adrian Bunk, 1,883, 1.3%
Takashi Iwai, 1,801, 1.2%
The top five individual companies sponsoring Linux kernel contributions include:
* 12.3% Red Hat
* 7.6% IBM
* 7.6% Novell
* 5.3% Intel
* 2.4% Oracle
Kernel Version 2.6.11 contains 17,090 files and 6,624,076 lines of code
The top five idividuals contributing changes:
Name, Number of Changes, %age of Total Changes
David S. Miller, 2,239, 1.5%
Ingo Molnar, 2,125, 1.5%
Al Viro, 1,981, 1.4%
Adrian Bunk, 1,883, 1.3%
Takashi Iwai, 1,801, 1.2%
The top five individual companies sponsoring Linux kernel contributions include:
* 12.3% Red Hat
* 7.6% IBM
* 7.6% Novell
* 5.3% Intel
* 2.4% Oracle
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