I wrote in an October 19 blogpost that HP (HPQ), IBM (IBM), etc. “created” Linux. In that post, I asterisked the term “created” because it was the word choice of another author.
As I said in the footnote, I didn’t want to take the space in my blogpost to explain why “created” is not the best way technically to explain how Linux is built. And the way Linux is built theoretically saves HP, IBM and the others a significant amount of research and development (R&D) expense that, also theoretically, drops to their bottom lines.
Coincidentally, on October 22 The Linux Foundation (LF) released a 12-page document that explains what it means to “create” Linux. LF is the consortium funded by Adobe (ADBE), Canonical, EMC (EMC), Google (GOOG), HP, IBM, Intel (INTL), Oracle (ORCL), Novell (NOVL), Red Hat (RHAT) and others where Linux kernel inventor Linus Torvalds hangs his hat.
LF has recently updated a study, first done earlier this decade, that estimates the R&D investment in time and money represented in a major Linux distribution… had the work all been done:
* by one company
* using a closed-source development methodology
* from scratch
And the answer is… this well-known free* software would have cost $10.8 billion to develop by one company, using a closed source development methodology, from scratch. This amount applies specifically to Fedora 9. Six years of effort would have been required (assuming 10,000 developers, documentation specialists, QA staffers, and so forth).
Fedora is the community that provides the base code of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. This group is much wider than LF. In a sense LF takes care of the Linux kernel although it has wider roles relative to Linux standardization and fostering inter-sponsor collaboration. Fedora 9—as with many Linux distributions—includes not only the relatively small Linux kernel but many utilities and supporting pieces of software. Examples include the other-meaning-of-free GNU utilities and X Window, whose development partially sponsored by Digital Equipment (now part of HP) and IBM predated Linux by up to a decade.
According to LF, if a Debian/GNU distribution had been used instead of Fedora 9 the result would have been a larger dollar number because Debian/GNU has more such additional components and therefore more lines of codes. Lines of code are the key driver of the LF’s estimating formula.
LF says that of the $10.8 billion worth of Linux development in Fedora 9, the cost of developing the kernel itself would have been $1.4 billion. That doesn’t mean that the kernel represents 13% ($1.4 billion divided by $10.8 billion) of a Fedora 9 distribution. It’s actually smaller (which is how you want it) because the LF formula assumes programming a kernel is more complex than programming, for example, the Mozilla Firefox browser, which is also included in Fedora 9. Doing the math on the back of an envelope, the kernel is only about 3% of Linux.
The LF numbers raise two interesting IT investment research questions:
* What does a Linux distribution really cost (vs. this theoretical cost)?
* How much does Linux's collaborative non-closed-source development methodology save HP, IBM, etc.?
The best way to tell is by comparing the LF’s numbers for Linux with numbers from a software company that still takes on such major software-development efforts independently, with a closed source development model. No one takes on such a project from scratch so a perfect comparison is not possible. There is basically only one such comparison point.
Separate posts to follow to answer the two questions with timing dependent on any Microsoft (MSFT) response to the LF numbers.
(*"Free" has many implications when it comes to Linux distributions but I am using it here in the sense of you can acquire it at no cost.)
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