Who Wrote, and Paid For, 2.6.20

Corbet writes "LWN.net did some data mining through the kernel source repository and put together an analysis of where the patches came from. It turns out that most kernel code is contributed by people paid to do the work — but the list of companies sponsoring kernel development has a surprise or two." The article's conclusion: "The end result of all this is that a number of the widely-expressed opinions about kernel development turn out to be true. There really are thousands of developers — at least, almost 2,000 who put in at least one patch over the course of the last year. Linus Torvalds is directly responsible for a very small portion of the code which makes it into the kernel. Contemporary kernel development is spread out among a broad group of people, most of whom are paid for the work they do. Overall, the picture is of a broad-based and well-supported development community."

SCO?

[fluch]

...did neither contribute nor pay?! Strange...

Re:SCO?

[Poppler]

Luckily, Sony appears to be a major contributer. Look's like we'll FINALLY see their rootkit ported to Linux.

Re:Define "volunteer."

[bad_fx]

Is it sad that I actually went carefully back through the article to see how much "Big Roy's Heating and Plumbing" had actually contributed.....? :-/

Re:Define "volunteer."

[Anonymous Coward]

not in any sense derived from Pointless Nerd Hairsplitting.

Oh, sorry, I thought this was SlashDot.

Re:Secretlab?

[gEvil (beta)]

That's certainly a very information-packed page. Thanks for the link.

Re:Secretlab?

[diggory]

Of course they don't - it's a secret.

Re:BDFL

[Anonymous Coward]

Comrade! You can pile into the Microsoft paddywagon and go off to Vista Gulag if you prefer!

Re:I find it intriguing ...

[Lord Ender]

I find it intriguing ... that "corporate America" takes so much bashing on /., and Linux (which is deified in these same boards) is so dependent on those same evil capitalist entities for its very survival

This may surprise you (intrigue you?), but Slashdot is not one person with one set of opinions. Even the editors do not collectively form one person. If they did, though, that person would probably have to wear a helmet at all times, and would constantly have drool running down its handi-capable face.

Re:Define "volunteer."

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to split hairs, but I think it's Slashdot.

Re:Quite a paradox

[Anonymous Coward]

I think at this point if you write a news story about a study, you're required to say it has surprising results. Because otherwise it isn't news.

Of course, by that token, a news story about a study whos surprising results are that there are no surprising results, would in fact be itself surprising. Which would, then, mean that the news being about the lack of news would itself be news.

In other news, sales of migraine relief medication just went up among Slashdotters...

Re:SCO?

[heritage727]

Not really. As I understand it, most of what is labelled IBM was stolen from SCO.

Re:Define "volunteer."

[Anonymous Coward]

Disregard that, I suck cocks.