As you may have noticed, posting to this blog was light last week, as in non-existent (OK, so you didn't notice.) This was because I was engaged in some serious geeking-out at the LCA2010 conference.
One of the talks that I saw came from Jon Corbet, who gave a run-down on recent changes to the Linux kernel. A statistic that he mentioned along the way has garnered much comment: the fact that "75% of the code comes from people paid to do it.
In my view, this 75% figure indicates two things. First, that *most* of the top kernel hackers are being paid to code. That's really great news, because it means that people can earn money doing what they love, and aren't obliged to starve in garrets. Secondly, it means that very large computer companies regard the kernel as so important that they are prepared to pay these people good salaries to work on it.
The reason why this doesn't mean that hackers have sold out was put well by Eric Raymond in a piece called
