Who Really Creates Linux? (You're probably going to be surprised)

Linux Watch ^ | 4/1/08 | Steven J. Vaughan Nichols

[Still Thinking]

It seems to convey a bit of humor that way, too.

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

And to answer the question who benefits (economically)?

My naive take is that what you have is like the confederation in Star Wars (I’m not much of a Star Wars fan so forgive any mistakes there) teaming up against the evil empire i.e. MS.

I think the IBM’s, Novells, etc. etc. benefit indirectly if MS can be defanged. These companies may also get to sell goods and services that they profit from but my take has always been that this is first and foremost and anti-MS effort and linux just happened to be a convenient vehicle from which to wage the campaign.

My $.02 obviously.

[Still Thinking]

I’ve thought the same. It’s probably good for them to an extent, that extent limited by the license, but anything that prevents further extension/consolidation of MS hegemony and keeps MS otherwise occupied leaves them more room to sell their other stuff.

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

Right and not to mention all the warm and fuzzies that IBM et. al. accrue for working for the “good guys”. 30 - 40 years ago today’s hackers would see IBM as the enemy. Now IBM gets kudos for standing up to MS. Interesting.

[GovernmentShrinker]

It was inevitable that the geeky kids churning out code in their parents’ basements would grow up and get paying jobs.

[sionnsar]

I think some of the other responders have this right.

I work in a similar collaborative effort, though it's the production of industry standards instead of software. The people I work most closely with are representatives from my employer's competitors.

[AFPhys]

Several of the other responses to the question of how companies make money with Linux were good. Yours was Great!

[MarkL]

You are wrong. A company CAN sell Linux. But that's not really where the money is made on any OS, at least unless they sell a gazillion copies. It's in supporting the software and associated applications that is where the money is made.

And that's true for for all companies, including Microsoft. They don't make that much money selling SQL server. They make money from selling services to design SQL systems for large companies.

Mark