ilia_kr Posted February 22, 2007 Report Share Posted February 22, 2007 Time recently published an article entitled Getting rich off those who work for free which, among other things, talked about free software this way: Open-source, volunteer-created computer software like the Linux operating system and the Firefox Web browser have also established themselves as significant and lasting economic realities. It is not uncommon to see Linux referred to as a volunteer-created system, as opposed to the corporate-sponsored, proprietary alternatives. There has been little research, however, into how much work on Linux is truly "volunteer" - done on a hacker's spare, unpaid time. In general, the assumption that Linux is created by volunteers is simply accepted. Determining the real provenance of free software can be a daunting task. There is a wealth of information available for those who look, however. In an attempt to shine some light in this area, your editor hacked up some scripts to do a lot of digging around in the kernel git repository. The idea was that, by looking at who is putting changes into the kernel, we can get a sense for where our source is coming from. ...full story here Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.