Idea #9837: Contribute to the kernel

Written by dino the 13 Jun 08 at 11:27. Category: System.
Related to: Nothing/Others. Status: New

Description

At the heard of ubuntu there is the linux kernel and I think its obvious why you should care about it. The kernel defines what hardware is supported, is a big influence in security, performance and stability of the operation system.

I wondered when I heard Canonical head 6 changes in 2.6.25 in comparison to an average of slightly over 6 changes *per hour* 24/7 the 2.6.25 kernel had.

Source:
At 23:00
http://youtube.com/watch?v=L2SED6sewRw

[edit]
Actually Greg got it wrong. Cononical got 6 changes in 2.6.26, not 6 changes in the last 5 years.

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Vadim P. wrote on the 13 Jun 08 at 13:18

That would be great if Canonical had a revenue and profits of millions. Then I'm sure they'd contribute more.

Do they though? Not exactly, they aren't even self-sustainable yet.

Eldmannen wrote on the 13 Jun 08 at 15:30

Yeah, it would be nice with Bluetooth 2.1 support and UDF 2.60 support.

acet wrote on the 13 Jun 08 at 16:02

So are you telling Canonical to contribute to the kernel?

dino wrote on the 14 Jun 08 at 10:28

Why they need millions of dollars to contribute to the kernel?

I don't know much about canonicals finaces. I just heard the sentence "canoncial is not giving back to the community" too often - from different ppl / projects. I know there are examples where they do.

Just some more statistics:
$ cat log-2.6.25 | grep -i debian | wc -l
51
$ cat log-2.6.25 | grep -i ubuntu | wc -l
24
$ cat log-2.6.25 | grep -i canonical | wc -l
9

Those doesn't show how many patches there are from which organization but how often the words are mentioned. Its inluced sign-offs and sentences like "tested on debian."

Anyone knows how much revenue debian got? Oh, there is no company at all...? Oh.

Ok, so compare to companies:
Top 11 changes to 2.6.25: linutronix with 168 changes. I dont have a glue how much revenue they got or what exactly they make there money with but they are as big as nine people.

So here part of the list what companies contributed how many patches to 2.6.25:
Red Hat 1181
Novell 817
IBM 705
Intel 472
[...]
AMD 26
Tensilica 26
Emulex 25
Adaptec 25
Rowland Institute, Harvard 24
Embedded Alley Solutions 22
Real-Time Remedies 20
Wind River 19
Google 17
CE Linux Forum 15
Mellanox 15
ARM 15
NVidia 14
Chelsio 12
Atomide 12
Coraid 12
Pengutronix 11
Tripeaks 11
Wolfson Microelectronics 11
Renesas Technology 11
Digi International 11
ST Microelectronics 11
LSI Logic 10
Hitachi 10
Volkswagen 10
Barco 9
Pardus 9
Mandriva 8
Semihalf Embedded Systems 8
Voltaire 8
Texas Instruments 8
Thinktube 8
Samsung 7
Movial 7
Toshiba 7
US National Security Agency 7
SANPeople 7
SICE S.A. - ACS Dragados 7
Canonical 6
Neterion 6
MSC Vertriebsges 6

(for those who wonder like i what NVIDIA contribute as they keep there graphic drivers out of the kernel the changes are about the forcedeth network card driver)

So,
Yes I think Canonical could contribute more to the kernel. They do kernel work, take
http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/l/linux/linux_2.6.24-16.30.diff.gz
for example.

Maybe a lot of this are backports from 2.6.25 and another big part is configuring the kernel. But instead of spending work and money on backporting how about working on the new kernel?

greets

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