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How Much is the Linux Kernel Worth? |
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Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 08:32 AM EDT
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David Wheeler has just written an article in which he calculates the cost to re-develop the Linux 2.6 kernel. He figures about $612 million. That is the least it is worth however, as he notes: "It's worth noting that these approaches only estimate development cost, not value. All proprietary developers invest in development with the presumption that the value of the resulting product (as captured from license fees, support fees, etc.) will exceed the development cost -- if not, they're out of business. Thus, since the Linux kernel is being actively sustained, it's only reasonable to presume that its value far exceeds this development estimate. In fact, the kernel's value probably well exceeds this estimate of simply redevelopment cost." What is Linux's value, then? A lot. The word billions comes to mind. I enjoyed watching him do the calculations, and I hope you do too. My thanks to him for permission to share this with you on Groklaw.
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Linux Kernel 2.6: It's Worth More!
David A. Wheeler
October 12, 2004
This paper refines Ingo Molnar's estimate of the development effort
it would take to redevelop Linux kernel version 2.6.
Molnar's rough estimate found it would cost $176M (US) to
redevelop the Linux kernel using traditional proprietary approaches.
By using a more detailed cost model and much more information about the
Linux kernel, I found that the effort would be
closer to $612M (US)
to redevelop the Linux kernel.
In either case, the Linux kernel is clearly worth far more than the $50,000
proposed by Jeff Merkey.
Introduction
On October 7, 2004, Jeff V. Merkey made the
following offer on the linux.kernel mailing list:
We offer to kernel.org the sum of $50,000.00 US for a one time
license to the Linux Kernel Source for a single snapshot of
a single Linux version by release number. This offer must be
accepted by **ALL** copyright holders and this snapshot will
subsequently convert the GPL license into a BSD style license
for the code.
Groklaw , for example, included an article that mentioned this proposal. It also noticed that someone with the same name is listed on a patent recently obtained by the Canopy Group. SCO is a Canopy Group company. Thus, this proposal raised suspicions in many as to Mr. Merkey's motivations.
Many respondents noted that Merkey's proposal
would require complete agreement by all copyright holders.
Not only would such a process be lengthy, but
many copyright holders made it clear in various replies
that they would not agree to any such plan.
Many Linux kernel
developers expect improved versions of their code to be continuously
available to them, and a release using a BSD-style license would
violate those developers' expectations.
Indeed, it was clear that many respondants felt that such a move
would strip the Linux kernel of legal protections
against someone who wanted to monopolize a derived version of the kernel.
Many open source software / Free software (OSS/FS)
developers allow conversion of their OSS/FS programs
to a proprietary program; some even encourage it.
The BSD-style licenses are specifically designed to allow conversion
of an OSS/FS program into a proprietary program.
However,
the GPL is the
most popular OSS/FS license, and it was specifically designed
to prevent this.
Based on the thread responses, it's clear that
many Linux kernel developers prefer that the GPL continue to be used as
the Linux kernel license.
In one of the responses,
Ingo Molnar calculated the cost to re-develop the Linux kernel
using my tool
SLOCCount.
Molnar didn't specify exactly which version of the Linux kernel he used,
but he did note that it was in the version 2.6 line, and
presumably it was a recent version as of October 2004.
He found that "the Linux 2.6 kernel, if developed from scratch
as commercial software, takes at least this much effort under the
default COCOMO model":
Total Physical Source Lines of Code (SLOC) = 4,287,449
Development Effort Estimate, Person-Years (Person-Months) = 1,302.68 (15,632)
(Basic COCOMO model, Person-Months = 2.4 * (KSLOC**1.05))
Schedule Estimate, Years (Months) = 8.17 (98.10)
(Basic COCOMO model, Months = 2.5 * (person-months**0.38))
Estimated Average Number of Developers (Effort/Schedule) = 159.35
Total Estimated Cost to Develop = $ 175,974,824
(average salary = $56,286/year, overhead = 2.40).
SLOCCount is Open Source Software/Free Software, licensed under the FSF GPL.
Please credit this data as "generated using David A. Wheeler's 'SLOCCount'."
After noting the redevelopment cost of $176M (US),
Ingo Molnar then commented,
"and you want an unlimited license for $0.05M? What is this, the latest
variant of the Nigerian/419 scam?"
Strictly speaking,
the value of a product isn't the same as the cost of developing it.
For example,
if no one wants to use a software product, then it has no value, no matter
how much was spent in developing it.
The value of a proprietary software product to its vendor
can be estimated by
computing the amount of money that the vendor will receive from it over all
future time (via sales, etc.),
minus the costs (development, sustainment, etc.)
over that same time period -- but predicting
the future is extremely difficult, and the Linux kernel isn't a
proprietary product anyway.
Estimating value to users is difficult, and in fact,
value estimation is surprisingly difficult to compute directly.
But if a software product is used widely,
so much so that you'd be willing to
redevelop it, then development costs are a reasonable way to estimate
the lower bound of its value.
After all,
if you're willing to redevelop a program, then it must have at least
that value.
The Linux kernel is widely used, so its redevelopment costs
will at least give you a lower bound of its value.
Thus, Molnar's response is quite correct -- offering $50K for something
that would cost at least $175M to redevelop is ludicrous.
It's true that the kernel developers could continue to develop the
Linux kernel after a BSD-style release, after all, the *BSD operating systems
do this now.
But with a BSD-style release, someone else could take the code
and establish a competing proprietary product, and it would
take time for the kernel developers to add enough additional material
to compete with such a product.
It's not clear that a proprietary vendor could really pick up the Linux
kernel and maintain the same pace without many of the original developers,
but that's a different matter.
Certainly, the scale of the difference between $176M and $50K is enough
to see that the offer is not very much compared to what the offerer
is trying to buy.
But in fact, it's even sillier than it appears; I believe the cost to
redevelop the Linux kernel would actually be much greater than this.
Molnar correctly notes that he used the default Basic COCOMO model
for cost estimation.
This is the default cost model for SLOCCount, because it's
a reasonable model for rough estimates about typical applications.
It's also a reasonable default when
you're examining a large set of software programs at once, since the ranges of
real efforts should eventually average out (this is the approach I used in my
More than a Gigabuck paper).
So, what Molnar did was perfectly reasonable for getting a rough
order of magnitude of effort.
But since there's only one program being considered in this analysis --
the Linux kernel --
we can use a more detailed model to get a more accurate cost estimate.
I was curious what the answer would be.
So I've estimated the effort to create the Linux kernel, using a
more detailed cost model.
This paper shows the results -- and it shows that redeveloping the
Linux kernel would cost even more.
Computing a Better Estimate
To get better accuracy in our estimation,
we need to use a more detailed estimation model.
An obvious alternative, and the one I'll use, is
the Intermediate COCOMO model.
This model requires more information than the Basic COCOMO model,
but it can produce higher-accuracy estimations if you can provide
the data it needs.
We'll also use the version of COCOMO that uses physical SLOC
(since we don't have the logical SLOC counts).
If you don't want to know the details, feel free to skip to the next
section labelled "results".
First, we now need to determine if this is an "organic", "embedded", or
"semidetached" application.
The Linux kernel is clearly not an organic application; organic applications
have a small software team developing software in a familiar,
in-house environment, without significant communication overheads,
and allow hard requirements to be negotiated away.
It could be argued that the Linux kernel is embedded, since it often
operates in tight constraints; but in practice
these constraints aren't very tight,
and the kernel project can often negotiate requirements to a limited extent
(e.g., providing only partial support for a particular peripheral
or motherboard if key documentation is lacking).
While the Linux kernel developers don't ignore resource constraints,
there are no specific constraints that the developers feel are
strictly required.
Thus, it appears that the kernel should be considered
a "semidetached" system; this is the
intermediate stage between organic and embedded.
"Semidetached" isn't a very descriptive word, but that's the word used by
the cost model so we'll use it here.
It really just means between the two extremes of organic and embedded.
The intermediate COCOMO model also requires a number of additional parameters.
Here are those parameters, and their values for the Linux kernel
(as I perceive them); the parameter values are based on
Software Engineering Economics by Barry Boehm:
- RELY: Required software reliability: High (1.15). The Linux kernel
is now used in situations where crashes can cause high financial loss.
Even more importantly, Linux
kernel developers expect the kernel to be highly reliable,
and the kernel undergoes extensive worldwide off-nominal testing.
While the testing approach is different than traditional testing regimes,
it clearly produces a highly reliable result
(see the
Reliability
section of my paper
Why OSS/FS? Look at the Numbers!).
- DATA: Data base size: Nominal (1.0). Typically the Linux kernel
manages far larger data bases (file systems) than itself, but it
handles them as somewhat opaque contents, so it's questionable that
those larger sizes can really be counted as being much greater than
nominal. Handling the filesystems'
metadata is itself somewhat complicated, and does take significant
effort, but filesystem management is only one of many things that
the kernel does. So, absent more specific data, we'll
claim it's nominal. If we claim it's higher, and there's reason
for doing so, that would increase the estimated effort.
- CPLX: Product complexity: Extra high (1.65).
The kernel must perform multiple resource handling with dynamically
changing priorities: multiple processes/tasks running on potentially
multiple processors, with multiple kinds of memory, accessing peripherals
which also have various dynamic priorities.
The kerrnel must deal with device timing-dependent coding, and
with highly coupled dynamic data structures (some of whose structure
is imposed by hardware). In addition, it implements
routines for interrupt servicing and masking, as well as multi-processor
threading and load balancing.
The kernel does have an internal design structure, which helps manage
complexity somewhat, but in the end no design can eliminate the
essential complexity of the task today's kernels are asked to perform.
It's true that toy kernels aren't as complex; requiring single
processors, forbidding re-entry, ignoring resource contention issues,
ignoring error conditions, and a variety of other simplifications
can make a kernel much easier to build, at the cost of poor performance.
But the Linux kernel is no toy.
Real-world operating system kernels are considered extremely difficult
to develop, for a litany of good reasons.
- TIME: Execution time constraint: High (1.11). Although it doesn't need to
stay at less than 70% resource use, performance is an important
design criteria, and much effort has been spent on measuring and
improving performance.
- STOR: Main storage constraint: Nominal (1.0). Although there has been
some effort to limit memory use (e.g., 4K kernel stacks), Linux kernel
development has not been strongly constrained by memory.
- VIRT: Virtual machine volatility: High (1.15).
The most common processor (x86) doesn't change that quickly, though new
releases by Intel and AMD do need to be taken into account.
But the other components of underlying machines
(such as motherboards, peripheral and bus interfaces, etc.)
change on a weekly basis. Often the documentation is unavailable,
and when available, it's sometimes wrong.
The Linux kernel developers spend a vast amount of time identifying
hardware limitations/problems and working around them.
What's worse, because of the variety of different hardware (and more
which keeps arriving), the interface of the underlying machine is
actually quite volatile.
- TURN: Computer turnaround time: Nominal (1.0). Kernel recompilation
and rebooting aren't interactive, but they're reasonably fast on
2+ GHz processors. Once the first compilation has occurred,
recompliation is usually quite quick for localized changes.
Thus, there's no reason for this to be a penalty.
- ACAP: Analyst capability: High (0.86). It appears that the
those analyzing the system, and determining what should be done in
terms of identifying the "real" requirements and the
needed design modifications to support them,
are significantly better at doing things than the industry average.
- AEXP: Applications experience: Nominal (1.0). It's difficult to
determine how much experience with the Linux kernel
the software developers of the Linux kernel have.
Clearly, if you modify the same program day after day for many years,
you'll tend to become more efficient at modifying it.
Some developers, such as Linus Torvalds and Alan Cox,
clearly have a vast amount of experience in modifying the Linux kernel.
But for many other kernel developers it isn't clear that they have
a vast amount of experience modifying the Linux kernel.
In absence of better information, I've chosen nominal. This suggests that
on average, developers of the Linux kernel have about 3 years' full-time
experience in modifying the Linux kernel.
More experience on average would help, and lower the effort
estimation somewhat.
- PCAP: Programmer capability: High (0.86). Generally only
highly capable, above-average developers (75th percentile or more)
would be successful at helping to develop a kernel.
- VEXP: Virtual machine experience: Nominal (1.0). The x86 processors,
which are by far the most popular for the Linux kernel, are
relatively stable and developers have much experience with them.
But they are not completely stable (e.g., the new 64-bit extensions
for x86 and the NX bit).
The Linux kernel is also influenced by other processor architectures,
which in the aggregate change quite a bit over time.
In addition, most of the kernel is in its drivers for hardware, and this
hardware often acts as a virtual machine as well as a needed interface.
Many driver developers, while experienced in general,
often have less experience with that particular
component, and they often don't have good documentation to help them.
What's worse, hardware components are notorious for not operating as their
specifications proclaim, and the kernel's job is to hide all that.
Thus, this is averaged as nominal, and this is probably being generous.
- LEXP: Programming language experience: High (0.95).
- MODP: Modern programming practices: High - in general use (0.91).
This program is written in C, which lacks structures such as
exception handling, so there is extensive use of "goto" (etc.) to implement
error handling. However, the use of such constructs tends to be
highly stylized and structured, so credit is given for using modern
practices. Some might claim that this is
giving too much credit, but changing this would only make the estimated
effort even larger.
- TOOL: Use of software tools: Nominal (1.0).
- SCED: Required development schedule: Nominal (1.0). There is little
schedule pressure per se, so the "most natural" speed is followed.
Results
So now we can compute a new estimate for how much effort it
would take to re-develop the Linux kernel 2.6:
MM-nominal-semidetached = 3*(KSLOC)^1.12 =
= 3* (4287.449)^1.12 = 35,090 MM
Effort-adjustment = 1.15 * 1.0 * 1.65 * 1.11 * 1.0 * 1.15 *
1.0 * 0.86 * 1.0 * 0.86 * 1.0 * 0.95 * 0.91 * 1.0 * 1.0
= 1.54869
MM-adjusted = 35,090 * 1.54869 = 54,343.6 Man-Months
= 4,528.6 Man-years of effort to (re)develop
If average salary = $56,286/year, and overhead = 2.40, then:
Development cost = 56286*2.4*4528.6 = $611,757,037
In short, it would actually cost about $612 million (US) to re-develop the
Linux kernel.
Why is this estimate so much larger than Molnar's original estimate?
The answer is that SLOCCount presumes that it's dealing with an
"average" piece of software (i.e., a typical application) unless
it's given parameters that tell it otherwise.
This is usually a reasonable default; almost nothing is as hard
to develop as an operating system kernel.
But operating system kernels
are so much harder to develop that, if you include that difficulty
into the calculation, the effort estimations go way up.
This difficulty shows up in the nominal equation -
semidetached is fundamentally harder, and thus has a larger exponent
in its estimation equation than the default for basic COCOMO.
This difficulty also shows up in factors such as "complexity";
the task the kernel does is fundamentally hard.
The strong capabilities of analysts and developers, use of modern practices,
and programming language experience all help,
but they can only partly compensate; it's still very hard to
develop a modern operating system kernel.
This difference is smoothed over in my paper
More than a Gigabuck because that paper
includes a large number of applications.
Some of the applications would cost less than was estimated, while
others would cost more; in general you'd expect that by computing the
costs over many programs the differences would be averaged out.
Providing that sort of information for every program would have been
too time-consuming for the limited time I had available to write that paper,
and I often didn't have that much information anyway.
If I do such a study again, I might treat the kernel specially, since
the kernel's size and complexity makes it reasonable to treat specially.
SLOCCount actually has options that allow you to provide the
parameters for more accurate estimates,
if you have the information they need and you're willing
to take the time to provide them.
Since the nominal factor is 3, the adjustment for this situation
is 1.54869, and the exponent for semidetached projects is 1.12,
just providing SLOCCount with
the option "--effort 4.646 1.12"
would have created a more accurate estimate.
But as you can see, it takes much more work to use this more
detailed estimation model, which is why many people don't do it.
For many situations, a rough estimate is really all you need;
Molnar certainly didn't need a more exact estimate to make his point.
And being able to give a rough estimate when given
little information is quite useful.
In the end, Ingo Molnar's response is still exactly correct.
Offering $50K for something
that would cost would millions to redevelop, and is actively used and
supported, is absurd.
It's interesting to note that there are already
several kernels with BSD licenses: the *BSDs (particularly
FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD).
These are fine operating systems for many purposes,
indeed, my website currently runs on OpenBSD.
But clearly, if there is a monetary offer to buy Linux code,
the Linux kernel developers must be doing something right.
Certainly, from a market share perspective, Linux-based systems are far
more popular than BSD-based systems.
If you just want a kernel licensed under a BSD-style license,
you know where to find them.*
It's worth noting that these approaches only estimate development cost,
not value.
All proprietary developers invest in development with the presumption
that the value of the resulting product (as captured from license fees,
support fees, etc.) will exceed the development cost -- if not, they're
out of business.
Thus, since the Linux kernel is being actively sustained, it's only
reasonable to presume that its value far exceeds this development
estimate.
In fact, the kernel's value probably well exceeds this estimate of
simply redevelopment cost.
It's also worth noting that the Linux kernel has grown substantially.
That's not surprising, given the explosion in the number of peripherals
and situations that it supports.
In
Estimating Linux's size,
I used a Linux distribution released in March 2000,
and found that the Linux kernel had 1,526,722 physical source lines of code.
In
More than a Gigabuck,
the Linux distribution had been released on April 2001, and its
its kernel (version 2.4.2) was 2,437,470 physical source lines of code.
At that point, this Linux distribution would have cost more
than $1 Billion (a Gigabuck) to redevelop.
The much newer and larger Linux kernel considered here, with far more
drivers and capabilities than the one in that paper,
now has 4,287,449 physical source lines of code, and
is starting to approach a Gigabuck of effort all by itself.
And that's just the kernel.
There are other components that weren't included More than a Gigabuck
(such as OpenOffice.org) that are now common in Linux distributions,
which are also large and represent massive investments of effort.
More than a Gigabuck
noted the massive rise in size and scale
of OSS/FS systems, and that distributions were rapidly growing in
invested effort; this brief analysis is evidence that the trend continues.
In short, the amount of effort that today's OSS/FS programs represent
is rather amazing.
Carl Sagan's phrase "billions and billions," which he applied to
astronomical objects, easily applies to the effort
(measured in U.S. dollars) now invested in OSS/FS programs.
A Postscript
I'd like to thank Ingo Molnar for doing the original analysis
(using SLOCCount) that triggered this paper.
Indeed, I'm always delighted to see people doing analysis instead of
just guesswork.
Thanks for doing the analysis!
This paper is not in any way an attack on Molnar's work; Molnar computed
a quick estimate, and this paper simply uses more data to refine his
effort estimation further.
Feel free to see my home page at
http://www.dwheeler.com.
You may also want to look at my paper
More than a Gigabuck: Estimating
GNU/Linux's Size,
my article
Why OSS/FS? Look at
the Numbers!, and my papers and book on
how to develop
secure programs.
© Copyright 2004 David A. Wheeler. All rights reserved.
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 08:37 AM EDT |
If any....
[ Reply to This | # ]
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- Corrections - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 08:39 AM EDT
- Jeff Merkey and some of his past 'work' - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 09:07 AM EDT
- very misleading - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 10:45 AM EDT
- Corrections - Authored by: IANAL on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 11:08 AM EDT
- price setting - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 11:20 AM EDT
- price setting - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 01:41 PM EDT
- price setting - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 02:34 PM EDT
- price setting - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 14 2004 @ 01:00 AM EDT
- Rational? - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 03:18 PM EDT
- Corrections - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 11:24 AM EDT
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Authored by: gormanly on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 08:46 AM EDT |
Easy: it's priceless, and the GPL ensures it stays that way... [ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 08:54 AM EDT |
Oscar Wilde's definition of a cynic: "they know the cost of everything and
the value of nothing. ..."
The Linux kernel is actually priceless, and a fabulous gift to mankind.
PS I understand David's motives were pure. Thanks for the insight. [ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 08:57 AM EDT |
$50000 was far too low, but even $100 million probably wouldn't cut it. I doubt
IBM (as a copyright holder) would be willing to give it away for that, it's
worth far more to them anually as it is....[ Reply to This | # ]
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- License, not an outright sale - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 10:57 AM EDT
- Legal fees ?? - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 12:22 PM EDT
- No joke - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 03:38 PM EDT
- No joke - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 14 2004 @ 04:09 AM EDT
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 09:01 AM EDT |
Isn't is amazing to think that, at David Wheeler's given cost, MS could
theoretically develop something like 100 Linux kernels just with its sleeping
cash?
Yet MS is barely able to sustain Windows plus variants, and has renounced to
further develop Internet Explorer.
Either it means that in regards of MS efficiency the Linux kernel value is
severly underevaluated, or MS greediness
is pathological.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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- How Much Linux Kernels could MS create? - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 09:31 AM EDT
- Yes ..................... n/t ... n/m ... eom - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 10:18 AM EDT
- its just the kernel - Authored by: Paul Shirley on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 10:28 AM EDT
- How Much Linux Kernels could MS create? - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 10:47 AM EDT
- MS IE? - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 12:46 PM EDT
- Neither of the above - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 10:54 AM EDT
- Stuck fast - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 02:36 PM EDT
- How Much Linux Kernels could MS create? - Authored by: DannyB on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 02:43 PM EDT
- How Much Linux Kernels could MS create? - Authored by: Jonathan Bryce on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 03:15 PM EDT
- Zero Micro$oft does not create!! They steal. - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 05:24 PM EDT
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 09:03 AM EDT |
Please use a html link
<a href="[website]"> title </a>
[ Reply to This | # ]
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- Mac users beware. - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 09:07 AM EDT
- Yankee group about to create fud about linux v windows again - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 12:37 PM EDT
- Intel v AMD. - Authored by: Brian S. on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 01:06 PM EDT
- Intel v AMD. - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 05:30 PM EDT
- Intel v AMD. - Authored by: Ed L. on Thursday, October 14 2004 @ 01:18 AM EDT
- Sad answer - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 14 2004 @ 05:28 AM EDT
- Not really - Authored by: Ed L. on Thursday, October 14 2004 @ 04:24 PM EDT
- Off Topic items - Authored by: davcefai on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 01:43 PM EDT
- That huge NHS system in the UK. - Authored by: Brian S. on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 01:46 PM EDT
- Microlite use SCO as exclusive channel - Authored by: thinman on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 02:39 PM EDT
- SCO plans alternative to Groklaw Web site - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 03:03 PM EDT
- Off topic: GMail invite - Authored by: DigiGato on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 03:11 PM EDT
- SCO anti Groklaw site coming - Authored by: skip on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 04:30 PM EDT
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 09:17 AM EDT |
So it would take 4,528.6 Man-years of effort to (re)develop and it takes SCO
25,000 man years to find code ... does not compute!!
system5[ Reply to This | # ]
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- Man years? - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 10:19 AM EDT
- Man years? - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 10:26 AM EDT
- Man years? - Authored by: DannyB on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 02:55 PM EDT
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Authored by: eamacnaghten on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 09:30 AM EDT |
Hang on - before the flames start, let me explain...
Any stock item in a
store can have up to three values associated with it...
- Spent cost - or
the amount of money you needed to fork out to buy the thing in the first
place
- Replacement cost - the amount of money you would need to fork out
to get another one should this one be sold, stolen, destroyed etc
- Sale
cost - the amount of money you would get if you sold it
I cannot
think of any other cost for any item anywhere. Now let us take a look at
Linux....
- Spent cost - Zero. I have many copies of many versions of
Linux floating around my office and none of them cost me anything. I know many
people in the same situation, and probably most Groklaw readers are.
- Replacement cost - Zero. It does not cost me anything to get
replacement copies of Linux. See above.
- Sales Cost - Zero. I cannot
give any of my copies of Linux away, and I certainly could not sell the
CDs - certainly not with anyone being able to get it elsewhere cost-free
anyway.
Do not get me wrong, I am not saying there is no money to be
made from Linux, or Open Source products in general, I am simply saying that
Linux, in strict materialistic sense, is worthless. I do not see a
contradiction there. In fact it's "worthlessness" is one of it's key
attractions, that you can use it without being answerable to some kind of IP
police.
What Jeff V. Merkey wants to buy is control of Linux. He is a
landgrabber. It was people like him that gave cartographers such a bad name in
old England (they used to draw maps for the rich gentry which were used to
proove that common land belonged to them). However, software developers are not
stupid and are wise to this kind of shinanigins. He seems to be on a bit of a
fools errand anyway as not only is all the developers umlikely to sell out, but
contributors like IBM, Novell and so on have company/shareholder motives not to
as well.
Web Sig: Eddy Currents
(residing on the planet Magrathea :-))
[ Reply to This | # ]
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- Wrong - Linux is worthless - sort of - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 09:36 AM EDT
- But all those are GPLed... a BSD-licensed copy could have value - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 09:54 AM EDT
- Wrong - Linux is worthless - sort of - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 10:23 AM EDT
- Value is in the eye of the Beholder (note Linux has the Linus preamble that increases values)! - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 10:34 AM EDT
- Wrong Approach - Authored by: JScarry on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 10:36 AM EDT
- Wrong - Linux is worthless - sort of - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 10:54 AM EDT
- Linux is worth..., err, costless... NOT worthless - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 10:59 AM EDT
- Linux *media* is worthless - Authored by: AllParadox on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 12:51 PM EDT
- Wrong - Linux is worthless - sort of - Authored by: k12linux on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 02:39 PM EDT
- Wrong - Linux is worthless - sort of - Authored by: Jonathan Bryce on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 03:08 PM EDT
- Wrong - Linux is worthless - sort of - Authored by: Steve Martin on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 10:52 PM EDT
- Value is subjective - Authored by: Ikester on Thursday, October 14 2004 @ 12:11 AM EDT
- Wrong - Linux is worthless - sort of - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 14 2004 @ 08:28 AM EDT
- Reminds me of two famous quips (and to get serious...) - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 14 2004 @ 01:23 PM EDT
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 09:35 AM EDT |
and let him have a snapshot of the 1.0 kernel. That would have been funny! [ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 09:49 AM EDT |
It looks like the original offer also applies to the 2.0 versions, which is
somewhat dated by now. <P> Still I'd consider $50K a silly suggestion...[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 09:52 AM EDT |
If someone actually had a serious intent to produce a proprietary version of
Linux, they would probably figure out that BSD has done 90% (or more) of the
work for them already; it just needs a Linux binary API. Remember, the BSD
licence allows you to make proprietary derivatives.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: blacklight on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 10:02 AM EDT |
"We offer to kernel.org the sum of $50,000.00 US for a one time license to
the Linux Kernel Source for a single snapshot of a single Linux version by
release number. This offer must be accepted by **ALL** copyright holders and
this snapshot will subsequently convert the GPL license into a BSD style license
for the code."
I would refer to this offer as "trying to get something for nothing".
This offer, to be successful, requires a presumption that the copyrights holders
of the kernel are smart enough to contribute their excellent code, but not smart
enough to realize that the offerer is trying to rip them off - a pretty big
presumption, even though I say so myself. IBM will be thrilled to know that its
code contributions to Linux are worth less than $50K, by the way.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 10:10 AM EDT |
An item is only worth what people are willing to pay for it.
As there seems to be only one offer of 50k, then that, IMO, is its's current
worth.
The fact that people generally want it for free would put another price on it
(priceless ;-) ), but others may opt for worthless, but thats another story...[ Reply to This | # ]
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- hero or zero? - Authored by: inode_buddha on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 10:33 AM EDT
- hero or zero? - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 01:08 PM EDT
- hero or zero? - Authored by: Paul Shirley on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 10:39 AM EDT
- hero or zero? No, only if you're willing to sell - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 11:22 AM EDT
- hero or zero? - Authored by: Liquor A. on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 12:59 PM EDT
- hero or zero? - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 02:00 PM EDT
- hero or zero? - Authored by: blacklight on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 03:39 PM EDT
- hero or zero? - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 03:51 PM EDT
- hero or zero? - Authored by: Anonomous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 04:35 PM EDT
- hero or zero? - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 05:46 PM EDT
- hero or zero? - Authored by: coffee17 on Thursday, October 14 2004 @ 09:14 AM EDT
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 10:25 AM EDT |
Notice how much Jeff Merkey sounds like Steph Murkey? Probably coincidence, but
from the offer, it sounds like they were separated at birth.
-- Alma[ Reply to This | # ]
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- Birth? - Authored by: overshoot on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 03:17 PM EDT
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 10:26 AM EDT |
He and his business associates settled a stolen code suit with Novell in 1998.
His quote in the press release indicates an
almost childish lack of understanding of his obligations to his former employer
relating to the code he developed while employed by them.
http://www.novell.com/news/press/archive/1998/08/pr98100.html[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 10:35 AM EDT |
Hints:
1. Wolf Mountain and Wolf Mountain Group which appears to be
the former name of Timpanogas (lots of news stories on this).
There
are tons of interesting news stories about how it split up from Novell, got
involved in litigation with them, claimed to have got $50 million of venture
capital funding (funny how this number keeps on coming up and coming up in SCOX,
in PointServe, etc). Interesting Yahoo post with some
quoted.
In 2002, Timpan
ogas Sells Intellectual Property To Canopy Group
2. In LKML you can
find posts by him discussing the GPL in October 2000, and November-December
2000. In the latter posts, November-December 2000, you can see him discussing a
super viral theory of derivative works.
In this he claims, if
you've seen the code (in his example of a GPL work), then new code you develop,
even if it contains nothing of the original, is, according to him, a
derivative work.
See his stuff here
.
3. Around late September 2001, you'll also find him equating hacking
to terrorism, I quote, "When people are crashing planes into buildings and
killing people by the thousands, hacking laws should be tough"
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 10:41 AM EDT |
Priceless is the word, and I would have to say that computers are so all
encompasing in this day and age that legislation (globally) should dictate that
an operating system MUST be GPL'd for general use, as otherwise too much power
is concentrated into one companies hands.
The world really needs to have all computers running the SAME operating system
so that all applications developers can develope for a common platform. Windows
has proven the benefits of this approach, but also highlighted the need for the
above GPL requirement, as power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely,
although I believe MS was corrupt before they became all powerful.
ET.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 10:46 AM EDT |
Value: priceless, as long as you don't start asking money.
Obvious maybe, but worth mentioning...
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: phrostie on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 10:52 AM EDT |
this only reconfirms that it is SCO that has put GPLd code in Unix Ware.
that is why they want it BSD'd.
that is why they want the code declared theirs.
this is why they will not show the common code.
they do have common code, but want to see all of AIX so they can say It's IBMs
fault, not theirs.
until they get this they can't show it.
---
=====
phrostie
Oh I have slipped the surly bonds of DOS
and danced the skies on Linux silvered wings.
http://www.freelists.org/webpage/snafuu[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Peter Smith on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 10:57 AM EDT |
One can only applaud David Wheeler's lucid exposition.
That said, I remain convinced his estimates are far to low because he fails to
take into account the real world difficulty of launching such a project in a
finite pool of programmers against well established and aggressive competition.
In other words his calculations assume the project is initiated in a nearly
ideal vacuum.
As an experienced project manager my first thoughts would be
- where and how do I find a sufficiently large body of very competent and
enthusiastic programmers?
- where and how do I find the super competent managers who will lead this body?
- how on earth do I retain their skills, energy and enthusiasm through the dark
periods of predictable project disasters and merciless competitor onslaught?
To do this I will have to pay far above the going rate, easily doubling the
costs.
In the mean time how do I maintain investor confidence? Only a miracle would
retain their confidence in such a venture. So I must factor in the cost of
losing investor confidence.
Also not included in his calculations is the value of the 'brand'.
The marketing cost of establishing a brand value equal to that of Linux would,
in my opinion, more than double again the cost.
In fact the market barriers to the entry of a new proprietary OS competitor are
so high that failure must be considered likely. How does one calculate the cost
of trying to overcome these barriers?
These considerations, I think, give a better idea of the real worth of Linux.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: SpaceLifeForm on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 11:04 AM EDT |
Even this model of COCOMO is flawed because the model
assumes a method of
development that plainly is not used
in the development of the kernel. See here
for more info on that.
But, more importantly (and why the Linux
kernel is so good),
is the amount of testing that goes on. And this testing
is
ongoing during the development process even when things
are known to be broken.
And this testing is done multiple
times by multiple testers on multiple
platforms of various
configurations. There is no way that the level of
testing
that occurs during Linux development is even closely
approximated in any
COCOMO model.
So, while the COCOMO that David Wheeler built is quite
useful,
his answer clearly has to be low. Billions and Billions
would be
more accurate.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 11:10 AM EDT |
I think the Linux kernel is priceless. It is the blood, sweat, and tears (of joy
and struggle) of many contributors. And I am glad it is protected by the GPL. If
Linus wanted to sell out, he could, but he couldn't take his product with him.
It is left for others to enjoy. What a self-less attitude. Differs from the
snobbish self centered whiney "I-am-better-than-you" attitude of Steve
Ballmer and Bill Gates. (They are weak men.)
What we see here is a classic retro to the time Bill Gates bought MS-DOS for
$50,000 from Seattle Computer
http://www.campusprogram.com/reference/en/wikipedia/b/bi/bill_gates.html
I think we have learned a bit from that mistake of mankind.[ Reply to This | # ]
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- Aha! - Authored by: Ed L. on Thursday, October 14 2004 @ 01:37 AM EDT
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Authored by: Nick on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 12:20 PM EDT |
How much is that kernel that's not Windows?
The one with the open source trail.
How much is that kernel that's not Windows?
I do hope that kernel's not for sale [ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: rsi on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 12:25 PM EDT |
Don't we have enough problems with SCO? Those numbers are too hard for
little Billy Gates to resist!!! ;^) [ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: dobbo on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 12:50 PM EDT |
I would suggest that some of David Wheeler's assumptions have
caused his
redevelopment cost of $612 million to be to high.
His analysis uses a
commercial estimate of of cost.
But a competitors that wantted to enter a market
space would likly only develop a subset of the target's functionality,
but a
subset designed to target the lion's share of that market space. If developing
a Linux alternative who would
bother to support the IBM's s390 platforms, IBM
sort of have their
foot in the door on any OS sales for the s390.
My
(quick and dirty) calculations of the platform SLOC using
cd
/usr/src/linux/arch;
for dir in *; do
echo -n $dir;
wc -l `find
$dir -name *.c -o -name *.h -o -name *.S -o
-name *.s` | tail
-1;
done
suggest a total of 1,048,977 lines. If only half of those
lines counted were
code lines this gives something like 500,000 SLOC were only
38,000 are needed
to support the i386 architecture, as pointed out, the platform
with the
largest install base.
If we take as working figure 462,000
SLOC that would not
have to be developed in a competitor
product then the MM-normal-semi-detached
figure is 2894.15 too high; giving
4,155.1 man-years.
Plug this number into the salary calculation and we find that
the cost is now
only $561 million. A substantial saving of over $5
million.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. There are many devices
that are not
available for the i386 platform. Devices for Sun's SBus for
example, which
only found on the SPARC platforms. The drivers
branch
of the Linux kernel source tree is over twice the size of the
arch
branch. There is also a great deal of redundancy in the
file-systems branch.
A competitor to Linux would only need one journaled
file-system.
David Wheeler also counted code that is obsolete. Not
just driver's
for the i386 platform who's hardware is no longer available, but
also parts
like ipchains or devfs , which have been
replaced
by better systems. When developing a replacement one does not need
to
develop all the blind alleys and dead ends of the original.
When added
together there are many millions of
dollars of savings to be made.
I'd
like to thank David Wheeler (and before him Ingo Molnar) for making me
think
about the cost of Linux. As I read this paper I saw assumptions with
it that I
didn't like, just like he did with Molnar's work. I add this to
the public
debate and welcome comments, especially from David Wheeler and
Ingo Mlnar, on
the error of my ways. In my mind the real cost of re-developing
Linux lies
somewhere between the two.
Of course I don't think anyone is going to
attempt to make yet another product
for a saturated i386 market space, there are
already a wealth of alternate OS
to Linux: Microsoft's Windows, the BSDs, SCO's
offerings and Sun's Solaris x86
that I can think of. But thinking of the
competition has lead me to see
something else. An answer to 'Why did Microsoft
and Sun take a SCO license
when they did?' Of course Sun has always been a big
licensee of Unix, but
their timing sucked.
It gave SCO the money they
needed to hang themselves. If PJ's (and others)
analysis is correct SCO appears
to have tied the noose around its own neck.
We are now just waiting for the jury
to give the nod, and the judges to pull
the lever releasing the trap door. When
SCO is kicking in its final death
throws Microsoft and Sun will be able to point
and say 'Look, the GPL did
that; do you want that to happen to
you?'
Of course we all know that it is not the GPL that is the cause,
but SCO's
failure to abide by the license, even after many had pointed out
the
error of their ways. So lets start now getting the counter claim
evidence.
If you worked for a company that was found in breach of license and
taken
to the cleaners, lets get that case in the public eye, especially if
was
by Sun or Microsoft.
I also think we need to hear from anyone who
has suffered because their
software supplier was found in breach of license and
had to
change/port/re-license/whatever as a result.
In the post-SCO time-frame
it might be worth pointing to
the licenses of SCO/Caldera Linux and say 'Look,
these guys were hardly
effected at all; that's the GPL at work!'
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 12:54 PM EDT |
I'm a bit concerned to everyone squealing gleefully about how much the
kernel
is worth. Other people have already spoken intelligently about what
can and
can't be measured, so I won't go there.
But one of the standard
talking-points in bashing the GPL is that "all or most
of that programmer
effort has been stolen from those programmers'
employer." According to this
argument (which I definitely do
_not_ agree with), you've just proven that the
Linux kernel has in fact gouged
the global economy of a half a billion dollars
of revenue.
Expect this to be on MS's website by the end of the week. [ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 01:02 PM EDT |
My biggest problem with this theory is the idea that anyone would actually
re-develope the ENTRIE Linux kernel.
50k was offered for a piece of bundled software; however, if you were to decide
to develop on your own, there is no way you would try an put the entire kernel
tree into you project. No, you would only develop those things you would
actually need/use/be able to resell. No one would add all the HAM radio or
legacy file system support into a kernel they were developing for an embedded
watch calculator.
Also, his asumption is that you would start from scrath. Why? You would start
from the most advanced source which has a licence/price/features for which you
believe will work best for you. [ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 01:08 PM EDT |
Actually Carl Segan never used the phrase "Billion and Billions". That
was Johny Carson on the Tonight Show imitating Carl Sagan. I read it in one of
Carl's books.
Ward[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: dracoverdi on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 01:17 PM EDT |
Has anyone else notice that man-years to redevelop in the above estimate are
significantly less than the SCO estimate of the time required to check it for
potential copyright violations?
---
The problem with ignorance is that the afflicted are unaware of their ailment[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 01:48 PM EDT |
The naturalist Louis Aggaziz was once offered a large sum of money to do a
series of lectures at Harvard. He replied, "I cannot afford to waste my
time making money."
Think about that for a few minutes. When you get it, you get an idea of where
the kernel developers are coming from.
MSS[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 02:34 PM EDT |
The same arguement was made for Bill Gates Back in the day. What he did, behind
the scenes, was illegal, stupid, illogical. But he made his money, and nobody
can prove anything.
Now sure, anyone can take code, not comply with the GPL, and re-release it
somewhere else, perhaps in propriatary code. And you may think nobody will ever
find it. Maybe not. And if someone does discover the code, maybe someone will do
something about it, maybe not. You may gamble. You can laugh and scorn all you
want.
The point is, the GPL helped bring Linux and Open Source where it is today. I
have a working Linux desktop, free from the bonds of Microsoft. And most people
who actively smite and talk-down the GPL hate that I am free from the bonds of
Microsoft. So sorry to see you cry. Wah, you little sissies.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: dmac on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 02:38 PM EDT |
A simple observation: computers and the underlying code(s)and systems that
operate them are becoming the underlying language of human social and
intellectual intercourse; and will ultimately be public domain. They will be
infinitely valuable and valueless all at the same time, in a similar fashon to
Spanish, English, Polish or any other human "language".
It's an interesting exercise to calculate the economic value of such tools, but
it's like trying to evaluate development and maintenance of English--
essentially an organic automatic and ongoing thing. The only real control (read
"profit") to be made from English would be by publishers of
dictionarys who keep track of this organic evoloution and document it. I guess
you could measure that.
Linux, DOS, Fortran, Windows variants etc. are tools through which communication
is possible with basic computing machinery and ultimately back to the human
user. As human communication tools they are living organisms. My sense of
history tells me that FOSS is inevitable. If it came out any other way we would
be paying royalties to Meriam Webster or Funk & Wagnall now. Living language
can't be controlled.
In a few hundred years folks will look back at Linus and he will be somewhere in
there with Gutenberg in status as the catalyst who enabled computer languages
into the public domain the way movable type unleashed the printed word 600
years ago.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: rsmith on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 02:45 PM EDT |
You can only sell your freedom once, and whatever you get for it isn't worth it.
---
Intellectual Property is an oxymoron.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Nick_UK on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 03:01 PM EDT |
Firstly, congratulations on the longest URL I have EVER
seen in my life ;)
OK, so who owns the 'kernel source' and is the postion to
accept such a proposal? If I had even submitted a one
line fix to it, I am part owner... let alone all the real
developers.
The Linux kernel cannot be 'sold' as such anyway,
thankfully.
Nick [ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 03:08 PM EDT |
Get real, people. $50k is a reasonable offer for a proprietary license to use
the linux kernel. Many GPLed products are also distrubuted under other non-GPL
licenses by their authors.
Also, ask anyone trying to buy a company how they value the worth of the
company. The previous development cost doesn't factor in to it, just the
possible return over the next couple years.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Groklaw Lurker on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 04:13 PM EDT |
Linux is priceless and the GPL is the reason.
Because the Linux Kernel is released under the GPL, all distributed
modifications, including any that are sold commercially, are also automatically
licensed under the GPL.
For this reason, every improvement that is made to the Linux Kernel for sale or
distribution to others is automatically contributed to the FOSS community at
large. This is why Linux was evolving so rapidly even before IBM began making
massive contributions to the Kernel. This is why the Linux Kernel will continue
to evolve at a clip that outpaces every commercial operating system on the
market today.
At what value could the future work of untold thousands of programmers over the
next several decades be estimated? I don't think it can be estimated. Most of
them will be volunteers, many of whom are not yet born. Linux is an evolving
paradigm, a development model that is likely still in its infancy from which
unguessable riches and freedom may spring.
Linux is priceless. Period.
---
(GL) Groklaw Lurker
End the tyranny, eliminate software patents.[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 04:26 PM EDT |
One may actually ask how much the Linux kernel is worth from
the perspective of what one is using it for. On a desktop
PC, it's probably worth what ever you paid. If one is out
on the ocean, on a Navy warship staking sailors lives on its
proper functioning, it might be worth significantly more!
[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 04:31 PM EDT |
Figure that an investor expects a 12 percent return on investment, and the 2.6
kernel has been out for a couple of years, presumable revenues before taxes and
interest should be in the neighborhood of 765 million. [ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 04:38 PM EDT |
One of the things left out of such an analysis is that most commercial
development projects cannot afford competitive development. With open source
projects, it is not unusual to have several different projects all attempting to
solve the same problem, with a few of them eventually eclipsing the others based
on some competitive factors that are not always closely related to how well the
project solves the problem. On large open source projects it is not unusual to
have multiple patches or approaches to solving a problem, these often compete
based on some criteria near and dear to those involved with the project.
With the Linux kernel, such competitions are fairly common. While performance is
perhaps the most common criteria for such competitions, some other criteria do
frequently intrude, such as, simplicity or "cleanness", robustness,
most bugs fixed, and even "does the 'right' thing".
With commercial pressures to get a product out the door, commercial analysts,
designers, and coders, generally restrict their efforts to their best guess.
Competitions are viewed as wastes of effort and money, introducing
inefficiencies and making workers less productive.
There are other values to the Linux kernel that I am not certain commercial
efforts at redevelopment could come close to reproducing. One example is ease of
customization, which is largely based on a modularity that is essential to large
opens source projects and which Microsoft claimed in court was not part of its
products.[ Reply to This | # ]
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- Huh? - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 07:30 PM EDT
- Huh? - Authored by: Khym Chanur on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 11:50 PM EDT
- Huh? - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 14 2004 @ 03:24 AM EDT
- He certainly did. - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 14 2004 @ 12:34 PM EDT
- Examples - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 14 2004 @ 12:36 PM EDT
- Examples - Authored by: kenryan on Thursday, October 14 2004 @ 12:55 PM EDT
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Authored by: cybervegan on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 05:18 PM EDT |
Greedy people assume that everyone else is as greedy as they are; they think
that everything has a price. I think that this is the GPL showing its true
worth - that once it's given, Free software cannot be taken back; it's a product
of pure self-lessness.
This offer was probably a cynical attempt to derail Linux - for if it had
worked, it would surely be the end of it - slowly eroding it's Free nature, as
proprietary interests crept in, forking and weakening it, until it became as
weak and fragmented as all the old Unix flavours. Maybe PJ's old saying
"follow the money" will yield some insights?
I for one am heartened by the integrity shown by the kernel developers in
wholeheartedly refusing to budge. We knew they were good guys, but this proves
it.
The GPL truly is a thing of beauty and power - the closest thing to real magick
this side of Mordor.
regards,
-cybervegan
---
Software source code is a bit like underwear - you only want to show it off in
public if it's clean and tidy. Refusal could be due to embarrassment or shame...[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 06:02 PM EDT |
this is probably a reasonable estimate for replicating a single version of the
kernel, but the kernel hasn't just had a single release.
a better estimate would look at all the releases (IIRC during the 2.6 kernel
series about 1/3 of the kernel has been re-written) so even if you were just
looking at 2.6 and completely ignoring all releases before that the development
cost would be about 30% higher.
this also helps address the error inherent in just measuring lines of code in a
project that encourages programmers to reduce the lines of code nessasary to do
the job[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: nowster on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 06:11 PM EDT |
There is a danger in this, of course.
SCO: You see here, Judge, that this Unix derivative is worth more than $600
million. We want some of that. Give it to us.
(Aside: Ever noticed that SCO lawyers call the judges "Judge" and the
IBM lawyers refer to them as "your honour"?)[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Observer on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 06:13 PM EDT |
I think the offer of $50K for a BSD style "snapshot" of the kernel is
ludicrous for legal and philosophical reasons, but purely on the basis of price,
it's not as bad as you might think.
Consider that people routinely buy
software packages for considerably less than it cost to develop the software in
the first place. If I had only one customer (as would be the case in a "for
hire" developed package), then the sale price has to be the "worth" of the
entire package, which naturally has to be more than my cost to develop it.
However, if I have many potential customers, then I can set any price I want,
down to the UMC, or the price differential between producing "n" and "n + 1"
copies of the item in question.
So, if this were a proprietary product which
I had created, and someone walked up to me and offered me $50K that I
wouldn't have otherwise received, then it's still another $50K in my pocket.
I can still sell more copies of my software if I want, and if the potential
market is big enough, someone else selling copies isn't going to hurt me very
much. If I plan on making my money off services, then having another person
selling products is only going to increase my potential base.
However, this
is not just another proprietary product. Therefore, the problem is not
the price tag (it could be $10B for that matter), but the idea of violating
the copyrights of countless kernel developers. It's the idea that they have
intentionally released their code under the GPL with the understanding that they
would profit from all future enhancements of their software. It's the future
value of the software and all potential enhancements that is at question
here.
--- The Observer [ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 07:40 PM EDT |
How does this 600 million estimate square with
stories such as
this one?
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 07:51 PM EDT |
As others have already mentioned, the Linux kernel is priceless.
By having the Linux kernel available, the GNU/Linux operating system a large
number of Free Software/Open Source applications are available.
Also, it has given birth to a commercial market which I think has grown into a
multi-billion dollar market.
Being the case that Linux is Open Source, it will always be available and a
market for it.
Regarding the $50,000 price, I think that not even Seattle Computers would
sell the original DOS now.
Cheers.
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Authored by: Night Flyer on Wednesday, October 13 2004 @ 10:37 PM EDT |
If the cost of Linux is $612,000,000 and, hypothetically, ten million copies are
sold, Linus et al would have to charge $61 each to break even (before packaging
and distribution costs).
If 'Microsoft Windows' cost $2.7 billion, and it sold 90 million copies, it
would have to charge $30 to break even (before packaging and distribution
costs)...
Comments:
1.) Even at $100 each, no wonder Microsoft has so much money left over for
lawsuits and lawyers.
2.) Note that I believe that Microsoft is not as cost efficient at writing code
as I think Linux contributors are. Also, note that Microsoft needs to spend
some of its profits writing security patches as well.
3.) Microsoft needs to clean its windows.
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Veritas Vincit: Truth Conquers[ Reply to This | # ]
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