Today Linux, Tomorrow the World?

Tech Central Station ^ | 01/22/2004 | James V. DeLong

[farmfriend]

Linux ping.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

And we have this:

IBM pushes Linux on Power processors

IBM pushes Linux on Power processors

Last modified: January 21, 2004, 2:55 PM PST

By Stephen Shankland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

       

NEW YORK--IBM has put more weight behind its effort to attract customers to Linux that runs on its own Power processors, an initiative that distinguishes Big Blue from its competitors in the server market.

In 2003, Linux on Power was a subsidized development project within IBM, but now it's a group with a revenue responsibility. To that end, IBM is working harder to attract software partners, write its own applications and ensnare customers.

"We're taking the value proposition of Linux and moving it to Power," Jim Stallings, general manager of Linux for IBM, said at a news conference at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo here.

		Get Up to Speed on... Open source Get the latest headlines and company-specific news in our expanded GUTS section.

And he's swayed some. Illuminata analyst Gordon Haff had been skeptical about the depth of IBM's Linux-on-Power push. "Linux on Power has been a lot of talk and professions of grand strategic intent without a whole lot of committed resources behind it. I don't think you can say that any longer," Haff said.

Among Linux on Power customers IBM announced Wednesday are Kendall-Jackson Wine Estates, Intermountain Health Care, the State University of New York at Albany, LexCom, National Semiconductor, Black Hills and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies.

IBM is trying to attract specific software partners in a handful of market segments, and is moving its own software to Linux on Power as well. At the show, the company is demonstrating its upcoming "Stinger" version of its DB2 database software that will run on 64-bit Power processors and take advantage of the new 2.6 kernel, or heart, of the Linux operating system.

Stallings hinted that more software partners may be appearing soon. "We're working closely with SAP to explore this area of Linux and Power," Stallings said. SAP's software is widely used to run accounting, inventory and other important business operations.

Linux is most widely used on computers using "x86" Intel processors such as Xeon and Pentium or Advanced Micro Devices' Athlon. Indeed, Intel's xSeries server line, which uses Intel processors, was the first foothold the operating system found within the company.

But Linux spread, first to IBM's mainframes and now to its Power processor-based pSeries and iSeries servers. Those systems today most commonly run two IBM operating systems, the AIX version of Unix and OS/400, respectively.

IBM hopes to make Power servers available at the same cost as those using Intel processors, said Brian Connors, IBM's vice president of Linux on Power. A key part of that will be the PowerPC processor, which is used in IBM's JS20 Power blade server as well as in Apple Computer's G5 computers.

Though Big Blue wants Power to be widespread, it doesn't have desktop computing in its crosshairs. "Our focus right now is clearly on the server," Connors said.

IBM--the loudest Linux advocate--was the first company sued by SCO Group in that company's attack on Linux. SCO argues that IBM breached its contract by moving Unix intellectual property such as file system software from Unix to Linux, a charge IBM disputes.

While several companies--Novell, Hewlett-Packard, Red Hat and the Open Source Development Labs--have begun indemnification programs or other legal protections for Linux customers, IBM steadfastly refuses to do so outside its contribution to the OSDL's legal defense fund.

"There's not a reason for having to indemnify if there's no basis for it," Stallings said.

In an interview, Stallings added, "Customers are not asking for indemnification. They're calling and saying, 'Explain to us what's going on.'" Once informed, they are happy to buy Linux, he said.

Customer views have been changing, though. Stuart Cohen, chief executive of OSDL, said in an interview that the Linux consortium began its $10 million legal defense fund for Linux users because of Linux customer requests.

Irving Wladawsky-Berger, the IBM vice president of technology and strategy who spearheaded Big Blue's Linux push, said IBM is addressing the situation as directly as possible with its legal fight against SCO.

"In our legal system, you get it over with by going to court," Wladawsky-Berger said. "We think the actions we're taking are absolutely the right actions to take the issue behind us."

Dig deeper: Open Source | Servers

• IBM Power blades to arrive in March
  
  November 14, 2003
• IBM advances Linux for Power chips
  
  July 14, 2003
• IBM advances Linux for Power chips
  
  July 14, 2003
• Get this story's "Big Picture"

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[Izzy Dunne]

a professional programmer can produce about 1000 lines of polished code in a year. A distribution of Windows or Linux has 30 million lines.)

I seriously doubt that 1000 number.
(Let's ignore the argument that Windows code might not be "polished").
30,000,000 by 1,000 = 30,000 man-years.

Does Microsoft have 10,000 programmers working full-time on Windows for 3 years? (not counting tech support).
If they pay them 50k each, that's a $500 million payroll.

[Izzy Dunne]

if the combined contributions of a large number of people can be valuable, it is also certain that not all of them will be so, and that some of them will even be malicious, which means that policing is required.

All of which is just as true for Microsoft as it is for any of the open-source centers.

[thedugal]

Depends on the programmer, but I would put it closer to 1000 lines per month.

[Wisconsin]

The article misses a principal source of open source applications.

Most software, often estimated at around 80%, is software produced internally for a business for its own needs.

As a hypothetical example assume a bicycle company. The network administrator wants to make his life easier, so he puts together a program that lets him monitor his network from a web browser.

The bicycle company isn't in the software business. It is never going to sell the program.

If the network administrator open sources the program two things happen. First he has other people looking for bugs in the program -- a task that essentially requires wide usage (think of the pre-release versions of commercial software released to a large number of customers for testing). Second, other people may add their contributions to the program.

The bicycle company benefits -- it gets better software-- its only cost being whatever time it takes its employee to coordinate the activities of the testers and contributors.

That is the source of a lot of open software, and it is a source the article ignores.

[ThePythonicCow]

Depends on the programmer, but I would put it closer to 1000 lines per month.

Programmer productivity numbers are all over the lot.

If I recall correctly, the 1000 lines per year comes from Brook's The Mythical Man-Month. For larger projects, the average programmer is, well, average, and there is much overhead for the complexities of large and difficult to manage projects. You're lucky to get that many production lines per year per programmer in such cases. See further a good discussion of this at: Book Reviews: The Mythical Man-Month by Frederick Brooks, Jr..

Other studies show higher productivity of 7,700 to 16,700 lines of code per year. See for example Are U.S. programmers slackers? (Computerworld, April 15, 1999). It really seems to depend on several variables, involving project complexity, programmer motivation and competence, and familarity with the subject. It doesn't seem to vary much over the years or by programming language. A line of Perl costs about as much as a line of assembly.

[Lexinom]

1000 lines per month seems more reasonable, although speaking from experience, very occasionally one might write that in a single day. With tools like RationalRose and COOL:Plex, it is possible to generate a million lines of code very quickly although, because it is generated not hand-written it tends to be ineffecient and duplicative. There is a very nonlinear relationship between time and lines of code. In the later stages of a project, more time is spent unit-testing and debugging, while in the early stages one might write simple command-line testbeds to test a system call to learn how it works before integrating it into the main program. My 2 cents.

[ThePythonicCow]

it is possible to generate a million lines of code very quickly although

When analyzing human productivity, I don't think it is usual, nor helpful, to count it that way. Rather, count it as how many lines or similarly sized small chunks of detail are input by the human.

If I write a one-liner in Python (the reading man's Perl), it counts as one line, not as a 1,000 lines for the equivalent in assembly code.

[ThePythonicCow]

1000 lines per month seems more reasonable

When a decent coder is coding, yes.

But to repeat myself, it depends.

If sizing something like OS 360 or Microsoft NT, then the number of lines in the first production release, divided out over the number of people in the programming department and the length of the project from startup to first release, will be more like 1000 lines per year, not per month.

There's a whole lot of 'stuff' other than coding that goes into coding a big project, and a whole lot of programmers that are less productive.

[Lexinom]

I agree. Personally, I don't like those tools because of the bloat; many people enjoy seeing the model from the higher level. Depends on one's interst. These 4GLs are typically used by large corporations that are more concerned about the business-side rather than the Silicon Valley innovators writing, say, low-level drivers or encryption/decryption and trying to milk every machine cycle. What you do in 1 line of Perl may indeed run 1,000 or more instructions in the interpretor.

[Lexinom]

There's typically a relationship between the size (and some might argue, maturity) of the project and amount of additional work: detailed design, code reviews, documentation, what have you.

Early programmers didn't have the luxury of color-coded editors and navigational tools like those in VC++.

Yes, there is definately a skill/motivation element, probably the biggest factor. Code Complete by Steve McConnell is an excellent book and cites many studies, incl. one that links even the amount of per-programmer office space to average productivity.

I'm just speaking from experience. ALSO, more skilled programmers don't necessarily produce more lines of code.

[ThePythonicCow]

Early programmers didn't have the luxury of color-coded editors and navigational tools like those in VC++.

Many Linux programmers still don't. The norm is vi or emacs, both curses based screen editors with modest (emacs) or no (vi) knowledge of programming languages. I actually still use ed, the original line editor for Unix for much of my coding ... the same editor I have used for 25 years.

The fancy editing, navigation and debugging tools are not essential in my view to productivity.

[Lexinom]

ed. Now that's going back aways. vi's has a strong following. Wish I could do more Linux work.

The navigation tools are not integrated in the editor in these cases. They're in the form of command-line tools like grep. If you're doing a major port of a large open-source project to an uncommon platform, you do need a way to search large numbers of files quickly, as the documentation is often sketchy or considered to be the code itself.

But I see your point.

[Lexinom]

BTW, in C, are the two or three lines of code here? :-)

for( i = 0; i < NODE_TOT; i++ )
{
  j = pNode->xyz;

[rdb3]

The Penguin Ping.

Wanna be Penguified? Just holla!

Got root?

[eclectic]

Doubleplusbump

Open Source = Socialist Fraud

[jimtorr]

Open Source = Socialist Fraud

Thanks, I appreciate the laugh before going to work.

[Glenn]

a professional programmer can produce about 1000 lines of polished code in a year

Maybe lazy, inept professional programmers. I can do that in a day if I am on a roll or up against a deadline.