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I agree Red Hat and pretty much every other contributor's result is a net gain. The point I was making is that the overall contribution isn't free. ie the folks
by Edmond 13y ago
I agree Red Hat and pretty much every other contributor's result is a net gain. The point I was making is that the overall contribution isn't free. ie the folks working on it are paid by various companies. I believe all the major tech companies have a few devs that they basically loan out to the kernel development effort.
- adwf 13y agoYes, there's potential for a Tragedy of the Commons style problem to happen with kernel development, where each corporate developer suddenly decides to save money and not contribute, whilst letting everyone else pay. Eventually everyone would follow suit and nothing would get done. Not exactly the same as the Tragedy of the Commons, but similar in the sense that it works best when everyone works together. NB: It's also important to note that some kernel work is actually on drivers for specific products. eg. Intel's contributions are largely making sure that all their hardware will work in a Linux server/desktop, not necessarily the kind of general Linux ecosystem development that Canonical might do.
- gizmo686 13y agoI don't see the tragedy of the commons concern here. Presumably, each company is contributing because they need/want something with the kernel that is not already being provided. Instead of keeping the development in house, which would involve maintaining a fork and almost certainty breaking copyright, they decide to contribute it back to the mainline kernel. At the point where no one wants to contribute, I would expect that the expected value for some companies of having a single employee work on the kernel is greater than the That this happens to benifit everyone else is just a side effect.