Tuesday, April 29, 2008

I've moved

Thanks for visiting. My blog has moved here.

Friday, April 4, 2008

So who are the top contributors to the Linux Kernel?

Greg Kroah-Hartman of SuSE Labs along with Jon Corbet of LWN.net and the Linux Foundation just published a very informative state of the union of the Linux Kernel development world.

The kernel is one of the largest collaborative software projects on the planet. According to the report, over 3700 individual developers from over 200 different companies have contributed to the kernel since 2005. That's amazing!

I found a couple of very interesting facts in this report - the top 30 contributors and the top 30 organizations sponsoring kernel development.

The top 30 contributors include:
(Reference: Linux Kernel Development Report)

Al Viro
David S. Miller
Adrian Bunk
Ralf Baechle
Andrew Morton
Andi Kleen
Takashi Iwai
Tejun Heo
Russell King
Stephen Hemminger
Thomas Gleixner
Patrick McHardy
Ingo Molnar
Trond Myklebust
Neil Brown
Randy Dunlap
Jean Delvare
Jeff Garzik
Christoph Hellwig
David Brownell
Paul Mundt
Alan Cox
Jeff Dike
Herbert Xu
David Woodhouse
Greg Kroah-Hartman
Linus Torvalds
Dmitry Torokhov
Alan Stern
Ben Dooks


The top sponsors of Linux Kernel development are:
(Reference: Linux Kernel Development Report)
None (developers who are doing work on their own)
Unknown (anonymous contributors doing work on their own time)
Red Hat
Novell
IBM
Intel
Linux Foundation
Consultants
SGI
MIPS Technologies
Oracle
Monta Vista
Google
Linutronix
HP
NetApp
SWsoft
Renesas
Freescale
Astaro
Academia (Universities)
Cisco
Simtec
Linux Networx
QLogic
Fujitsu
Broadcom
Analog Devices
Mandriva
Mellanox
Snapgear

It is pretty cool to learn from the report that 70% of all kernel developers are now getting paid to do what they enjoy the most!

Thursday, April 3, 2008

OOXML victory taints ISO credibility

Microsoft’s controversial OOXML private file format was voted in as standard DIS29500 by the International Standards Organization, err… the “I Sold Out” (ISO) this weekend. Amid serious allegations of irregularities in the voting process, political manipulation, cronyism, influence trading and unfair practices employed to secure favorable votes, ISO committees stuffed with inept members representing various countries voted 75% in favor of OOXML.

All for a document format! What a shame to demolish the credibility of such a prestigious standards body. And for a format from a corporation which fiercely opposes competition, cannot tolerate open standards and cannot get over misusing its corporate reach.

The Open Malaysia blog has some interesting stats about the vote.

* 24 out of 32 P-Members (Participating Members) voted in favor of OOXML (75%). The requirement for confirmation is >= 66.66%.
* A total of 61 P-Members and O-Members (Observing and Other Members) voted in favor.
* 10 out of 71 member countries voted against (14%).
* 16 countries abstained and were not counted in the total.

According to noooxml.org , a lot of last minute vote switching occurred due to heavy influence brokering by Microsoft, its subsidiaries and its business partners. This carried OOXML forward to approval. But approval at what cost? Desperate efforts to win by compromising institutional integrity can only backfire and is already leading to erosion of brand credibility for Microsoft around the world. Microsoft is its own worst enemy.

Another report discussing the problems at the Ballot Resolution Meeting (BRM) can be found at Groklaw. Ubuntu’s Mark Shuttleworth has also commented about the process in an interview.

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Mozilla turns 10!

Mozilla’s 10th birthday party in SF on March 31st felt like a Netscape reunion. Hundreds of geeks and cat-herders, many with Netscape jackets, shirts, and nostalgia, gathered together to celebrate Mozilla’s phenomenal success. Mitchell Baker, Brendan Eich and the Mozilla community were all there to party, to enjoy the cake and to be merry. As the galactic chocolate birthday cake was being cut, Mitchell predicted that many opportunities and challenges lay ahead in the next 10 years and that the greatest achievements for Mozilla are yet to come.

Mozilla has millions of reasons to celebrate. After 500 million downloads, Firefox stands tall as the world’s best free and open source web browser. After 500 million downloads, Firefox has single-handedly turned the tables on IE and has prevented Microsoft from closing the Web. Mozilla is Netscape done right.

Life would be almost unimaginable without Firefox.

Way to go! Mozilla. Live long and prosper.