Posted on 03/31/2007 10:02:49 AM PDT by ShadowAce
I’m sure everyone reading this has heard the debate over whether that top dog free operating system should be called “Linux” or “GNU/Linux”, but how big a contribution is GNU or Linux to that operating system? As conventional wisdom has it, it’s the availability of applications that make a system valuable, and this is where free software really shines. Linux contributes only about 6% to the cost value of a full operating system, but then again, GNU contributes only about 15%—who do we have to thank for the remaining 79%?! And why don’t we hear them complaining about what it’s called?
This isn’t really about “GNU/Linux”, it’s really about asking “Where does free software come from?” In order to answer that question in any really definitive way, of course, you first have to collect all the relevant free software applications into one giant collection so you can do statistical analysis on them. Wouldn’t it be nice if somebody would do that for us?
Oh, yeah... ;-)
Debian GNU/Linux represents the largest such collection in existence, and with something like 15,000 packages, it comes pretty close to representing the “universe” of free software (or at least, “working” free software, there’s plenty more that isn’t ready for prime time yet, as a quick look at Sourceforge will tell you). Debian will do nicely.
Meanwhile David Wheeler (who you may recall is an occasional contributor to Free Software Magazine), wrote a package called SLOCCount to count “physical source lines of code” (SLOC) in software projects, as well as evaluate them in terms of their “estimated replacement cost if they had to be redeveloped from scratch according to proprietary methods”, represented by their “COnstructive COst MOdel” (COCOMO) costs (which was, of course, originally developed to help managers estimate the cost of proprietary software development projects). This model is convenient to use, because it only needs physical source lines of code as an input, and that’s the easiest thing to collect. There are more sophisticated cost models out there (COCOMO II for a start), but they require more sophisticated input, and are therefore harder to use on a large automated estimation project. So COCOMO I it is.[1]
Observing these two wonderful facts, a group of researchers in Spain decided to have a go at Debian with SLOCCount, and published their results. Their interests are in things like what programming languages were used, but the complete data set can be used to answer some other questions, too. Including the question of who writes free software.
The dataset lists SLOC, package size, and COCOMO estimated cost for each package considered. The packages are meant to cover the entire bulk of Debian source packages, but without overly duplicating code (for example, if two closely related branches exist, pick only one of them). This makes sense, because presumeably the code was only developed once, and so copying didn’t cost much (some would say that's the whole point of free software).
So, in the end, they have 8,560 packages listed for Sarge (not the entire set, but fairly close). Less for earlier distributions, of course.
Now where do they come from? One way to estimate affiliation is by looking for dashed package names: for example, it’s probably fair to count, say, mozilla-thunderbird and mozilla-suite as both being products of the Mozilla project. Even if such a package is actually maintained by a third party, it’s still part of the “Mozilla culture” surrounding the Mozilla project. Many large free software projects are like that: a well organized core with a halo of unaffiliated supporters.
For the GNU project, however, there is a simpler way: they have a list. Which is nice, because they have quite a few projects. Fortunately, Debian is pretty conservative with package names, so if they package, say, “gcc”, there’s a strong chance the package name will contain the string “gcc”, so we can filter. Also, all Debian package names are strictly lowercase (this is policy), so we know exactly what to do to compare. This makes it a snap to cross-reference the GNU package list against the Debian collection.
Combining the two techniques, we can get a good picture of who’s behind all those packages. Here it is:
This estimate is by total accumulated SLOC, so it doesn’t draw any distinction between lots of small packages and one giant package. This means, for example, that it overestimates the value of GNU versus Linux. Both are underestimated against the field of smaller independent packages. However, SLOC are a nicely objective measure, so it’s good to start with this.
To get a better picture of the division by value, however, we can use the COCOMO estimated replacement cost numbers. These are a kind of lower limit to the value: because presumeably, you would have to spend this much to create these packages in order to use them. If they were developed by a proprietary organization and then sold, they would have to be sold at prices that would raise at least this much (distribution costs and profits would probably at least double these costs).
In any case, here’s what that valuation looks like:
You may be a little surprised by the total cost figure at the bottom of the chart. Yep. That's in adjusted Year 2000 US dollars, and is equivalent to approximately one half of the cost to develop the first Space Shuttle [2]. That’s a lot of value. Note of course, this is not necessarily what it actually cost to develop: we assume that free software methods are considerably more cost-efficient, and most of the contributions were “in kind” donations of time, so actual cost is much harder to compute.
But this chart is really about the pie slices: GNU, while being the single largest contributor, still only accounts for 15.3%. Meanwhile, Linux isn’t even number two—that honor goes to a set of desktop applications, OpenOffice.org. More to the point, more than half of the applications come from “the field”—thousands of individual applications created by individuals or companies for their own reasons, not backed by any of the high-profile, high-mindshare free software organizations.
I don’t mean to diminish the importance of the flagship organizations in maintaining free software. But it’s the fleet backing them up that makes the system into the powerful force that it is. The fairest term for what we like about “GNU/Linux” is probably neither “GNU” nor “Linux”, but rather just the “Free Software Operating System”. Free software operating systems are made valuable principally by the contribution of individual developers.
[1] I should probably mention that David originally used SLOCCount to analyze the Red Hat distribution, and while that’s interesting, it’s not as up to date or as comprehensive as the research I refer to here. Maybe I’ll write about that on another day.
[2] I got this information from transcripts from the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, reviewing the program. The cost adjustment is my own, based on government tables for adjusting the cost of large scale projects (not the consumer price index, which is inaccurate for these kinds of figures). The actual cost in 1980 dollars, was actually less than the figure for Sarge, but that’s just because of inflation. This is the cost to the first flight (of Columbia), and does not include program maintenance costs, which, over some 25+ years of flight is obviously much higher. That’s the fairest comparison I can make because it compares development to development in adjusted dollars. Gives you pause, doesn’t it?
Copyright ©2007 Terry Hancock / Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)
Originally published at www.FreeSoftwareMagazine.com.
You must retain this notice if you reprint this article.
Unless otherwise noted, the illustrations in this piece have the same attribution and licensing.
See, I told you he would show up.
Yep. And it's a good thing -- think how much less energetic the Linux threads would be without him. (I've always enjoyed a little mayhem with my techno-chat...)
Lol!
Well someone needs to correct all the linux lies on here. The starter of this thread just the other day was trying to tell someone he had been "exclusively using Linux since 2003" when the fact is he runs Windows right on his own laptop. I just don't understand how you could make up such a lie about yourself like that, do you?
No, you're just a masochist. You've received a thorough beating the last couple of times you showed up, yet you keep showing up. That's a masochist.
Actually, I don't think you've gotten anything right in months, not since you finally admitted to making up lies that the US DoD was using software from Russian hackers, who you were of course defending.
You're the one who said Torvalds did a 180 back when, WRONG. You're the one who says Groklaw is untrustworthy, yet can't show a single false court filing or transcript. You're the one who had no idea how Feist fit into the SCO case. I think I'm doing pretty well on this subject, you're doing pretty badly.
Russian hackers
That's your fallback position when you're losing. We know you've lost when you go there.
Piss on the FSF....an operating system is named by it's creator, and the creator of Linux is Linus Torvalds, not Richard Stallman or any of his accolytes. Just because some GNU software is in the OS, that does't make it a GNU system. That's like saying "hey, Ford used 45 percent Autolite branded parts in that car, so it's a Ford-Autolite". Stallman first tried telling people that Linus basically just altered the HURD kernel, which was utter crap. The Linux kernel was written from the ground up, and was inspired by Andy Tannenbaum's Minix system. When he got called on that BS, he then claimed that because it had so much GNU software in it, that it had to be called GNU Linux. He's full of it, but that's no secret in the Open Source community. If he wants a GNU branded system, he can get his little cult at the FSF to actually finish HURD (which is still in alpha after, oh, 20 years of testing...it sucks). Then let his GNU OS compete against Linux in the marketplace...where I predict it'll get firmly thrashed.
Golden Eagle used the fact that the name "Linux" is derived from Torvalds' name to try to portray Torvalds as some kind of egomaniac, naming an OS after himself.
But this is actually not true. Torvalds' name for his OS was "Freax," but the guy who ran the FTP server and gave Torvalds some space to host Linux named the folder "Linux" and it stuck as the name of the OS. So in this case the creator didn't get to name his OS.
Don't bother. He'll stop reading at this point. He doesn't want to hear that Torvalds isn't a commie, he only wants to libel his name by association with communists (even though it was involuntary). To him Torvalds and Stallman are one in the same, and no fact could ever change that. Here's a quote about the disagreements over the GPL3 (practical Torvalds vs. ideological Stallman):
You're fooling no one, this soap opera is just another pathetic example of leftists attempting to trick the idiotic. ... The rest is just a charade to hide from the facts.He actually thinks they're in ideological lockstep and there is no real disagreement in this issue, and he will continue to believe so no matter what facts we throw at him. You're wasting your time.
But you are so right about Stallman. He's so religious about this that he refused to interview with Information Week to counterpoint a Torvalds interview in a GPL3 story. Why? Because Information Week says "Linux" and not "GNU Linux." Now THAT'S an ego.
I think Hurd has even been surpassed by Minix, another attempt at a highly-modular microkernel-based OS. Hurd is still in 0.2 alpha, while Minix is stable at 3.1.2, although it doesn't have loads of drivers or features.
Well said LOL.
More pathetic lies from antiRepublican, the facts show Torvalds is probably going to side with the whacko Stallman in the end just as I have indicated was happening all along.
Maybe he will. But it's Stallman that's moving towards Torvalds, not the other way around. But whatever he agrees with will NOT be the original version, which you falsely claimed he did a 180 on. We told you back then that he stated he MAY agree with a MODIFIED GPL3 in the future, which was correct.
You can falsely claim lie all you want, but the history firmly establishes that you are the one who consistently lies, and never admits.
Person A says "I am going to do X".
Person B says "If you do X, youre on your own! I want Y"
Person A decides not to do X but adress Y instead.
Person B says "Well with X out of the way I *might* be ok"
So to you this is person B going along with A or person B drawing a line forcing person A to change their posistion?
They're still anti-patent copyleftists, and none of this charade changes that. Too bad there will probably not be a fork, but they don't really disagee that much and are loving the limelight and playing this for all that it's worth.
The other says "I dont like or use software patents but I dont think a license should enforce that"
Thats a huge difference. Linus, no matter how much you try to tie him to RMS, is pragmatic and not political when it comes to software development models and licenses.
Linus Torvalds when asked about patents: “hire a hit man and whack the guy”.
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