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Open source contributions are actually mostly not from the project in question. You'll almost always depend on a mountain of other code, in the form of the kern

Open source contributions are actually mostly not from the project in question. You'll almost always depend on a mountain of other code, in the form of the kernel, software libraries, user utilities, and so on. A lot of these are specialized projects and have their own core developers. Your project may be possible without them, on another platform for example, but in Linux there's still thousands of random devs contributing to a whole. Cloud software has suffered from NIH for a good long time now, and required proprietary APIs to function. You have to "integrate" your app with another app, it never just has implicit compatibility. Sad really.

ghaff 8y ago
That's a good point although it's not wholly unique to open source. In addition, container platforms for example may be made up of a fair number of different projects including container orchestration, the base container capabilities, monitoring, logging, CI/CD, etc.
kanox 8y ago
That claim that "vendor-paid developers do almost all work" also fits the Linux kernel. The kernel is very large and has many contributors but work done by random volunteers is dwarfed by that done by large companies. This is visible in contributor statistics: https://lwn.net/Articles/750054/ https://lwn.net/Articles/750054/ For the kernel the "community" is to a very large extent a community of companies.
- mr_toad 8y ago
  I get the impression that many of the kernel developers in these companies would be active in the community no matter where they worked. For example see this interview with one of the names on the list: ‘I can't imagine doing anything else for a living after having looked into most kernel subsystems at some point over the last 15 years.’ https://www.linux.com/news/30-linux-kernel-developers-30-weeks-arnd-bergmann https://www.linux.com/news/30-linux-kernel-developers-30-wee...

ghaff 8y ago

That's a good point although it's not wholly unique to open source. In addition, container platforms for example may be made up of a fair number of different projects including container orchestration, the base container capabilities, monitoring, logging, CI/CD, etc.

kanox 8y ago

That claim that "vendor-paid developers do almost all work" also fits the Linux kernel. The kernel is very large and has many contributors but work done by random volunteers is dwarfed by that done by large companies. This is visible in contributor statistics: https://lwn.net/Articles/750054/ https://lwn.net/Articles/750054/ For the kernel the "community" is to a very large extent a community of companies.

mr_toad 8y ago
I get the impression that many of the kernel developers in these companies would be active in the community no matter where they worked. For example see this interview with one of the names on the list: ‘I can't imagine doing anything else for a living after having looked into most kernel subsystems at some point over the last 15 years.’ https://www.linux.com/news/30-linux-kernel-developers-30-weeks-arnd-bergmann https://www.linux.com/news/30-linux-kernel-developers-30-wee...