I came across Linux Kernel development, a paper from the Linux Foundation that highlights a few important facts about the kernel development process. This nicely complements a few of my previous posts :
- Maximum numbers of developers on a project
- Surviving with many patches
- What Thoughtworkers think of git
- On real meritocracy
- Open Source is not a democracy
A few interesting quotes from the paper
“Regular 2-3 month releases deliver stable updates to Linux users, each with significant new features, added device support, and improved performance.”
“The rate of change in the kernel is high and increasing, with over 10,000 patches going into each recent kernel release. These releases each contain the work of over 1000 developers representingaround 200 corporations.”
“Since 2005, over 5000 individual developers from nearly 500 different companies have contributed to the kernel”
“We have seen a roughly 10% increase in the number of developers contributing to each kernel release cycle.”
“The kernel code base has grown by over 2.7 million lines”
“Patches do not normally pass directly into the mainline kernel; instead, they pass through one ofone-hundred or so subsystem trees. Each subsystem tree is dedicated to a specific part of the kernel (examples might be SCSI drivers, x86 architecture code, or networking) and is under the control of a specific maintainer.”
Once again, there might be a few things we can learn from Open Source.
