| Microsoft Contributed More Code To Linux Than Canonical Microsoft contributed more code than Canonical to Linux since 2.6.32:
Microsoft, a firm that many Linux users believe tried to kill off Linux through SCO, is the 17th most active contributor to the Linux kernel project since version 2.6.36.
Microsoft however is very keen to make Linux distributions work well with its Hyper-V hypervisor, so its kernel contributions are not entirely selfless.
One name missing from the top 20 list is Canonical, primary sponsor of the Ubuntu Linux distribution.
Last week Scott Crenshaw, VP of Red Hat's cloud business unit told The INQUIRER that Canonical doesn't write a lot of code, effectively calling the firm nothing more than a packaging outfit. The Linux Foundation's figures seem to back Crenshaw's claims, and while Canonical has done a lot to promote Linux, these figures will only increase the perception that it isn't contributing as much as it might to the Linux community. |
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 wmcbrine213 251 145 96
join:2002-12-30
Laurel, MD
kudos:1 | Yes, Canonical is a distro builder. They don't do a lot of kernel patching. Therefore, there is no reason for them to be a major kernel contributor.  That doesn't mean they aren't contributing to the community. The community is a lot more than the kernel.
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| reply to FF4me
said by FF4me :Microsoft however is very keen to make Linux distributions work well with its Hyper-V hypervisor, so its kernel contributions are not entirely selfless.
In fact, it is entirely selfless, otherwise they couldn't do it. It's the sole reason Microsoft gave in the press release when this story originally came out a year or two ago. |
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 rexbinaryMod KingPremium
join:2005-01-26
Plano, TX
 ·Verizon FiOS
| reply to FF4me
Mmmm spaghetti  |
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| reply to howardfine
said by howardfine:said by FF4me :Microsoft however is very keen to make Linux distributions work well with its Hyper-V hypervisor, so its kernel contributions are not entirely selfless.
In fact, it is entirely selfless, otherwise they couldn't do it. It's the sole reason Microsoft gave in the press release when this story originally came out a year or two ago. Entirely selfless?
No way. |
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 firephotoFacts hurtPremium
join:2003-03-18
Brewster, WA | reply to wmcbrine
said by wmcbrine:Yes, Canonical is a distro builder. They don't do a lot of kernel patching. Therefore, there is no reason for them to be a major kernel contributor. That doesn't mean they aren't contributing to the community. The community is a lot more than the kernel.
And here we start a 2 week news cycle about how Canonical leaches from the community because a "vendor neutral" report/article about Linux contributors points out the vendors that contribute the most.  And it's neutral because of the Linux Foundation people involved and if you ignore that they are actually paid by Canonical competitors it's absolutely neutral.
It's almost like Canonical is on the verge of releasing a long term supported product update... so neutral indeed.
Linux news is very predictable. In depth reporting of technical things 99% of people never touch, detailed info on server software updates, and what color the new desktop distro is and how fast the solitare game opens while comparing it to a Mac, or Apple or an iPad, or iPhone, or iPod, or iMac, or MacBook unless there is more popular keyword at the time of publication that will attract hits rather than readers.
Did you hear Red Hat was a $1,000,000,000.00 company! billions! special.
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| reply to FF4me
said by FF4me :Entirely selfless?
No way.
Yeah, read the article and that word stuck in my head. Selfish is the word that should be used. |
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| reply to rexbinary
LOL, you just remind me of a conversation with a friend who was part of Microsoft network stack team back in late 90s - he told me that Linux's network stack is like "spagetti".
Probably doesn't hold true now tho ;p |
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 donoreoPremium
join:2002-05-30
North York, ON | reply to FF4me
It would be interesting to see the stats on say the top 10 or 20 open source projects and who contributes to those. I wonder if Canonical would make any of those lists. |
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| reply to howardfine
said by howardfine:Selfish is the word that should be used. Yes, sir.  |
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 MaxoYour tax dollars at work.Premium,VIP
join:2002-11-04
Tallahassee, FL | reply to FF4me
Canonical utilizes the existing code base it needs to build the product it wants to build. It then codes the missing pieces it wants. It pushes its changes back to upstream, when appropriate, and it is up to upstream to accept them or not.
This is a very pragmatic approach and is how Open Sourceâ„¢ is supposed to work. It does not make sense for them to code in features that do not interest them, and it also doesn't make sense for them to write new code to replace existing code with identical, or good enough, functionality.
It does not behoove any downstream to keep a large patch-set against upstream, and the very little work I've done for Ubuntu, I've always been asked to submit upstream because they don't want the headache of keeping a bunch of patches around.
What's funny, is if you sit around in pro-Ubuntu circles, everyone is always very friendly and encouraging to other Linux distros. At the last UDS, one guy wore a red fedora the whole week and was made to feel very celebrated. It's only in other circles that the trolls come out.
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firephotoFacts hurtPremium
join:2003-03-18
Brewster, WA | said by Maxo:What's funny, is if you sit around in pro-Ubuntu circles, everyone is always very friendly and encouraging to other Linux distros. At the last UDS, one guy wore a red fedora the whole week and was made to feel very celebrated. It's only in other circles that the trolls come out.
In person gatherings always change the way people behave until you're in person with familiar people repeatedly and don't have a tolerance for bs then reality emerges. There's also the strict enforcement of how you are allowed to behave within the official ubuntu community so many people have to literally change who they are or be excluded which fosters more people that want that kind of control imposed over them. This is mostly why I can accept the product for it's quality (or lack of sometimes), but the community generally puts me off with the overall attitude that exists. Human behavior should be how it is not because someone made rules that keep you in the poofy cloud shaped box.
Articles like these are generally for pandering to those with the money that support what they do or to prop up indirect competition. This happens on the personal level so someone got a fancy lunch, tickets to a game, a new electronics gadget, access to some other hot news item. People don't talk about it either because they just say it's how it is or they engage in the same methods themselves.
The statistic of "contributing to Linux" is bogus anyway when you consider that your contributions only count if they are accepted. The kernel devs have a history of refusing many patches that are desktop linux specific on the grounds that these desktop specific changes need to either work well with a server or they need to be made generic so they could work with a server too while again degrading the desktop performance. Oh and most of the kernel devs who get to have a say in a lot of changes relevant to the desktop work for red hat which has little interest desktop enhancements and has said so.
At the end of the day Canonical makes a product and it's how they want it and they have millions of users of that product. Haters are always gonna hate if they're given the venue.
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MaxoYour tax dollars at work.Premium,VIP
join:2002-11-04
Tallahassee, FL | said by firephoto:In person gatherings always change the way people behave until you're in person with familiar people repeatedly and don't have a tolerance for bs then reality emerges. There's also the strict enforcement of how you are allowed to behave within the official ubuntu community so many people have to literally change who they are or be excluded which fosters more people that want that kind of control imposed over them. This is mostly why I can accept the product for it's quality (or lack of sometimes), but the community generally puts me off with the overall attitude that exists. Human behavior should be how it is not because someone made rules that keep you in the poofy cloud shaped box. This absolutely goes against with all of my experiences. People in the Ubuntu circles I've participated in are genuinely happy for people running any RedHat variation, Gentoo, OpenSuse, etc. The Ubuntu rules are about not trolling and debating in good confidence. It doesn't say anything about what you should or shouldn't think, and I've never seen any instance of someone told to think something else or leave. Only, if you have criticism, of say, Redhat, then articulate it like a thoughtful adult.
I still stand by my observation that the people in the Ubuntu circles are genuinely more open to other players in the Open Source community than people in many other Open Source communities are to others. In fact, there seems to be a deliberate attack specifically towards Ubuntu, not based on the merits and lack thereof of Ubuntu, but based on the fact that Ubuntu is so popular.
Ubuntu, with all of its flaws, is our best hope at delivering Open Source to the average person's desktop, and for that we should be all be supporting it. In the same way Android, with all of its flaws, is our best hope for Open Source in mobile computing. That doesn't mean anybody should necessarily like either, but if they care about the ethics of Open Source they should care about the success of these products.
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MaxoYour tax dollars at work.Premium,VIP
join:2002-11-04
Tallahassee, FL | To be clear, most of the people I encounter in the OS community are amazing. It's a limited few who encourage infighting and seem intent on putting other down. |
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MaxoYour tax dollars at work.Premium,VIP
join:2002-11-04
Tallahassee, FL | reply to FF4me
Here a friend of mine, and Canonical employee, Michael Hall retorts to this article. He simply argues that developers of FOSS find value in increased distribution, and Ubuntu provides that, which is in its own way a contribution Canonical is uniquely positioned to make in a magnitude that other Linux distributors are not.
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"Padre, nobody said war was fun now bowl!" - Sherman T Potter
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firephotoFacts hurtPremium
join:2003-03-18
Brewster, WA | reply to Maxo
said by Maxo:To be clear, most of the people I encounter in the OS community are amazing. It's a limited few who encourage infighting and seem intent on putting other down.
I agree that ubuntu people generally don't attack anything really. There are a few here and there at various levels that obviously choose their words carefully and have an agenda and craft policy around that agenda but for the most part this has just created what ubuntu is rather than having that agenda spread much to other projects or distros. I also don't see this agenda much anymore but it might just be due to not paying much attention to what ubuntu is doing for the last couple of years. It's probably more related to them just going their own way which is what really rubs some people the wrong way but there's a limited market for selling yellow submarines that are painted brown so they really had to do their own thing in a major way (if you count using the same old libraries as major).
On the other hand most always when red hat related devs make something that could be an industry standard it's propped up as one even before anyone else has a say. Just look at the "freedesktop" projects and you'll see all the red hat related ones get hosting when desired and everyone else has to jump through hoops and it really isn't even a nod to anything officially accepted but it gives the appearance that some of these things are the "linux standard" and red hat and it's people know that and have the control over that appearance.
And this difference is mostly due to how each company and community act so each attracts more people similar to how they already are.
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| reply to FF4me
Link: Shuttleworth defends Ubuntu's Linux contributions |
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 Hayward K A R - 1 2 0 CPremium
join:2000-07-13
Key West, FL
kudos:1 | reply to howardfine
said by howardfine:said by FF4me :Entirely selfless?
No way.
Yeah, read the article and that word stuck in my head. Selfish is the word that should be used. pretty much not selfless = or at least implies more selfish
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Hayward K A R - 1 2 0 CPremium
join:2000-07-13
Key West, FL
kudos:1
2 edits | reply to Maxo
said by Maxo:To be clear, most of the people I encounter in the OS community are amazing. It's a limited few who encourage infighting and seem intent on putting other down.
Many associated with a tasty big red fruit?
Who took there OS from the same source for themselves vs sharing, and are just jealous and pretend they own the whole ball of wax.
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