From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1753299AbYI2B5o (ORCPT ); Sun, 28 Sep 2008 21:57:44 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1750887AbYI2B5h (ORCPT ); Sun, 28 Sep 2008 21:57:37 -0400 Received: from www.church-of-our-saviour.org ([69.25.196.31]:43924 "EHLO thunker.thunk.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-FAIL) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750787AbYI2B5h (ORCPT ); Sun, 28 Sep 2008 21:57:37 -0400 Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2008 21:57:30 -0400 From: Theodore Tso To: jmerkey@wolfmountaingroup.com Cc: Rik van Riel , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [REQUEST] Clarification from Copyright Holders on FUSE/NDISWRAPPER Message-ID: <20080929015730.GK8711@mit.edu> Mail-Followup-To: Theodore Tso , jmerkey@wolfmountaingroup.com, Rik van Riel , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org References: <33521.166.70.238.43.1222622153.squirrel@webmail.wolfmountaingroup.com> <20080928194536.GC8711@mit.edu> <20080928194616.10d25760@bree.surriel.com> <58677.166.70.238.43.1222644857.squirrel@webmail.wolfmountaingroup.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <58677.166.70.238.43.1222644857.squirrel@webmail.wolfmountaingroup.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.17+20080114 (2008-01-14) X-SA-Exim-Connect-IP: X-SA-Exim-Mail-From: tytso@mit.edu X-SA-Exim-Scanned: No (on thunker.thunk.org); SAEximRunCond expanded to false Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Sun, Sep 28, 2008 at 05:34:17PM -0600, jmerkey@wolfmountaingroup.com wrote: > One nice thing about putting out a kernel debugger is it gives me a unique > view into the numbers and status developers working on Linux -- and it's > shrinking from the download patterns and the types of folks downloading > it. You're assuming that your metrics of people downloading your kernel debugger is an accurate way of measuring how many people are developing Linux. > Linux is pervasive, but based upon my observations, development is > declining and almost non-existent in commercial companies except for a > small handful of companies. I do not believe that Free BSD or some other > Unix is going to replace Linux, but what I see happening is a loss of > interest in Unix platforms generally. You may find these research reports interesting: http://www.linuxfoundation.org/publications/linuxkerneldevelopment.php http://www.linux-foundation.org/publications/IDC_Workloads.pdf The former shows that the development rate is if anything, increasing based on analyzing the rate that changes are flowing into the Linus's git tree --- something which I think everyone would agree is a better way of measuring the rate of development than the number of downloads of mdb. The latter is a report from IDC which calculates total enterprise spending in the Linux ecosystem at $21 billion in 2007, and predicts that by 2011 the figure will more than double to $49 billion. So the health of Linux, both in terms of the rate of development and the enterprise server ecosystem, seems to be doing quite well (never mind the surge of interest of Linux for mobile platforms). But if you want to develop on FreeBSD, hey, don't let us stop you. Different licensing strokes for different folks, after all... Regards, - Ted