Estimating the Size/Cost of Linux 196
2bits writes "Wow... A Billion Dollars Worth Of Software On My System For Free! Check This Guy Out, He Came Up With A Counting / Pricing Method For Quite A Few Types of Source Code. Here is the Program. The results on the site are sorta dated, based on RH 7.1, but the app is pretty cool!... Hey, I can finally find out how much all my side projects are worth / costing me..."
Billion dollars? (Score:1)
Re:Billion dollars? (Score:2, Informative)
He specifically talks about cost not value. But you are right that the correlation between sloc and cost is a non-trivial one. That is one reason why cost estimation is hard but it is far easier than guessing cost of a project before one has the source.
--
virve
Re: Billion dollars? (Score:2)
> Where did he get the billion dollar estimate from? I see no direct correspondance between lines of code and monetary value.
Using his numbers, I calculate that my part time effort on a hobby project over the last 9 months has resulted in a quarter of a million dollars worth of code.
Any takers?
Re:Billion dollars? (Score:1)
Re:Billion dollars? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, but what about the time spent in bug fixes, patches, etc? I supposed you can do something like this:
Programming cost = E dollars * ((X lines * C * percent * A minutes) + (X lines * D percent * B minutes))
You could even go fancy and calculate lines-per-minute based on each langauge. But then, what about Man pages, documentation, support sites, etc. These are things you would pay for in commercial software. Shouldn't these be a factor as well?
Yeah, right (Score:1)
Re:Yeah, right (Score:2, Insightful)
I think Microsoft has proved that true.
Bloated code may not be best, but it gets out the door faster.
Can you imagine what would happen in Microsoft cleaned the code to Windows XP? Imagine, they release an 40-mb service pack that trim's the OS size down 300MB, decreases boot-time by 75%, improves program launch speed 300%, improves security, stability, and functionality; all while making the OS easier to upgrade, and implement.
Of course, when this release is finally out in 2057, it won't make much difference.
Re:!!!! NEWBIE ALERT !!!! (Score:1)
I didn't intend to say that bloated code was "better" because it was faster to market. On the contrary. Bloated code runs slowly and is more prone to failure and security issues. I apologize for the implication.
As for newbie, I've only been using programming for 14 years, so I can see how you could make that mistake.
Re:Yeah, right (Score:1)
The study talks about cost, not value.
lets see here..... (Score:4, Funny)
Analyzing slashcode.....
Result: $6.66
[cmdrtaco@localhost]$
Re:lets see here..... (Score:1, Insightful)
The resulting value of 666 is also a common joke among geeks.
sigh -- Maybe this is why some people have
funny, but actually closer to $1,000,000 (Score:4, Funny)
Total Estimated Cost to Develop = $ 996,916
I would have posted the entire output of the program, but unfortunately, their million-dollar lameness filter wouldn't let me!
Re:Six dollars and 66 cents? (Score:1)
Sounds like someone needs to go back and do some paperwork using 2-ply and some sandpaper.....
WTF? (Score:1, Flamebait)
Okay, so now Slashdot is posting this story that is over a year old?
From the header of the paper:
More Than a Gigabuck: Estimating GNU/Linux's Size
David A. Wheeler (dwheeler@dwheeler.com)
June 30, 2001 (updated November 8, 2001)
Version 1.06
Re:WTF? (Score:2, Funny)
Slow news day, Taco? (Score:5, Interesting)
I know I'll get modded down for saying this, but Taco, as an "editor", couldn't you at least have fixed This Guy's Moronic Capitalization Scheme?
Re:Slow news day, Taco? (Score:3, Funny)
That's not a scheme. The entire post is a very long title for a very short book he's writing...
Re:Slow news day, Taco? (Score:2)
- Typing errors (25 hours per day)
- Incorrect information
- Seen "n" time stories
everday. We also have "trolls", "flameblaits" here. Once we also had "first posters". But I think they are gone (at least after I set minimum rating to +2).
Get used to it!
Re:Slow news day, Taco? (Score:1)
Yeah.... (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, that's what happens when you use P2P _WAY_ too much
Interesting. (Score:2)
Re:Interesting. (Score:2)
Not the only way. A bunch of coders could put together a software company and develop great products and recruit top talent. The company would grow and might eventually displace Microsoft.
Microsoft was once a couple of college-age kids who stayed up all night writing code who happened to get the DOS contract.
Companies have an advantage over OSS developers in that when the company is poised for success, people want to invest money in the company in order to reap larger returns later. This gives the company the advantage of more money to recruit top full time talent, etc. Most people regrettably have bills to pay, and the poorly funded nature of most OSS projects will always limit the amount of some people's time that the projects can obtain.
Re:Interesting. (Score:2, Interesting)
The chances of that happening again are fairly slim. This was clearly a case of being in the right place at the right time. A couple of years later and they would have found themselves trying to supplant the standard desktop OS. The combination of the right hardware platform, a 'new' OS and a viable business app all had to click at the same time. Had the PC revolution started years earlier and those same two college kids tried to unseat that alternate universe's Microsoft juggernaut it wouldn't happen, no matter how good a marketeer Bill is.
Companies have an advantage over OSS developers in that when the company is poised for success, people want to invest money in the company in order to reap larger returns later.
Precisely. Given the dominance of Microsoft in the market, those savvy people aren't likely to gamble with funds they want a return on. That's why OSS really is a viable way significant inroads can be made in the market. You now have several companies helping to fund that development. Entire countries are looking to OSS to free them from the Microsoft treadmill of costly upgrades and zany licensing fees. The momentum is building and Microsoft sees it. They don't have a problem with Apple because they see them as a niche player, but I don't think they'd be writing licenses with anti-GPL language in it if they didn't genuinely see it as a threat to marketshare. As much as some of us like to bash Microsoft the executives are not stupid and are quite capable of interpreting the GPL and understanding that their 'take' on the license just isn't supported by the GPL's language.
Re:Interesting. (Score:1)
--
If My spelling bugs you. Then my work is done.
In that case, you can go home now.
bad news for Linux? (Score:5, Funny)
This might have worked a few years ago, but with accounting practices coming under scrutiny across the board, I fear that these companies are headed for trouble.
Re:bad news for Linux? (Score:2, Flamebait)
This looks like a serious problem for Linux
distributors like Red Hat, Mandrake, and Debian.
They sell their products
usually.
Wrong. Debian doesn't sell anything.
Now we see that what they put into their product
(i.e., the cost) is orders of magnitude beyond
that.
Wrong again. Red Hat's costs are what they actually spend, not what the stuff they distribute would have cost if it had not been given to them.
even if nobody downloaded it for free...
There's your clue: _Red_ _Hat_ downloads the stuff they distribute for free.
Re:bad news for Linux? (Score:2, Insightful)
The IRS is going to love me come audit day...
Re:bad news for Linux? (Score:3, Funny)
From: Congress
Dear Sir,
We figured out recently that you are selling software which worths 1 billion dollar at suspiciously low price(~$30-$200).
Worse still, you also allow people downloading your software products from your website for Free! We've reason to suspect that you also involved in anti-competitive practices.
I hereby invite you and your accountants to come to congress to answer some of our questions.
Best Rgds,
P.S. Do not attempt to destroy any accounting records, we are watching you.
It's even more interesting from an accounting view (Score:1, Redundant)
Now, if GE can revalue its pension assets upwards, when their value has gone down, then surely the corporation can revalue it to a 'market' rate of (say) $10,000 a seat.
Rolling it out to all the people in your organisation then, gosh!, your company is suddenly as profitable as Enron or WorldCom were.
Best of all, so long as you never run out of blank CDs, your company can continue to make massive profits.
Hmmm... sloccount, you say? (Score:1)
sloccount - Programs for counting physical source lines of code (SLOC)
Re:Hmmm... sloccount, you say? (Score:1)
EVAL: it appears theres a *.deb of it already (or is this an old story...)
RESULT: TRUE.
value? (Score:3, Insightful)
Instead of wasting time figuring out ficticious pricing based on the way that corporate america prices software, why not figure out a way to remove the aforementioned hidden costs from Linux so that the masses can begin to see what many of us on /. have known for a while: That GNU Linux and Open Source Software represent a great choice.
value / payback Linux-centric? (Score:2)
The cost analysis was done based on linux, however most of the code analysed in fact is for things that run on other platforms, and much of which was in development for years before linux 0.9 hit the 'Net.
So the measure of value based on who uses Linux includes everyone who uses linux-hosted apache servers. The more general case includes everyone who accesses servers that depend on (Perl, BIND, sendmail, mysql .... etc) or were/are developed using (X11, CVS, bitkeeper, emacs, gcc .... etc)
The economic value isn't small. That much I'm pretty certain of, just how big, well it works for me, I'll leave the analysis to the economists.
Re:value? (Score:2, Informative)
For many Windows "sysadmins", the cost of is the cost of actually learning the basics of how TCP/IP works, some basics about how their computer works, and basics about how some application level protocols work.
The hidden cost of Linux is the time you have to spend learning things you should already know, for many Windows admins.
Re:value? (Score:2)
You hit the nail on the head. From an economic perspective, the improved ease-of-use of Microsoft software combined with the benefit derived from the fact that people are used to Windows have a 'value' greater than the licensing fees that Microsoft charges.
Hmmm (Score:1)
Didn't think about that, did you?
Nonsense (Score:2, Interesting)
The same people that argue in these categories do also try to legitimate open source software by their better "quality" in terms of fewer errors. The result of this argument is that MS software would be great to use if it contained less errors. But that's not the main point. As can be seen when MS does such horrible things like allowing themselves to destroy your software (DRM EULA change) the problem is not the result but the way they produce their software. I'd argue that because their development model is bad the resulting software is bad, too, bad that's only a minor problem in comparison to the harm they do to the software culture in general.
No more functions for me... (Score:3, Funny)
"Look, I wrote a program which does the exact same thing as another program, but mine is worth much, much more!"
Re:No more functions for me... (Score:3, Insightful)
cost != value in general
Re:No more functions for me... (Score:2)
I was just implying that I would cut-and-paste every relevant piece of STL code into my program, rather than '#include'ing it.
Re:No more functions for me... (Score:2)
I'll never use macros, functions, classes, or the stl again!
"Look, I wrote a program which does the exact same thing as another program, but mine is worth much, much more!"
Costs much, much more. Almost certainly.
Worth much, much more. Maybe.
With the cheaper way, you are at the mercy of the subroutines (of whatever binding) that you are using. The price is some variant of DLL hell.
With the more expensive way, everything is or can be optimized for exactly what you are doing. You don't need to solve problems you don't have. The price is a vastly larger scope of responsibility.
Which is better depends of course on the context.
Good example of the difficulties of defining any rational metric on software.
Yeah, whatever... (Score:1)
Heck, given that theory, one fire should net me more than enough to retire on.
Slashdot costs industry $1billion/year (Score:5, Interesting)
I love these kind of stats.
Slashdot has, say, 100,000 US readers per day.
Each spends an hour reading slashdot when they should be working.
Let's say an average Slashdot reader is worth say, $40 an hour, and they read Slashdot on 300 days during the year.
That means Slashdot costs the USA $1,200,000,000 dollars a year! Crikey! Don't tell Bush!
Re:Slashdot costs industry $1billion/year (Score:1)
You underestimate me, sir.
Garg
Re:Slashdot costs industry $1billion/year (Score:1)
Re:Slashdot costs industry $1billion/year (Score:2)
But.. (Score:1)
Personally, I'd feel bad if I wrote a program which was just a bunch of spaghetti.
Now we know why... (Score:2)
His Paper Is Bunk (Score:5, Insightful)
In his paper, he uses the basic COCOMO model for estimating the cost. This model, quite frankly, sucks. Boehm's book even states, more or less, that the COCOMO model is only accurate to a factor of 10.
Since I no longer have the Boehm book, this quote from a google-found web page will have to do. This is a quote of a quote from Boehm's book, Software Engineering Economics:
"Basic COCOMO is good for rough order of magnitude estimates of software costs, but its accuracy is necessarily limited because of its lack of factors to account for differences in hardware constraints, personnel quality and experience, use of modern tools and techniques, and other project attributes known to have a significant influence on costs."
Basically, this means that the estimate could be anywhere from $100M->10B in true cost.
At the very least, this kid should have stated which of the model variants he was using.
Better yet, he should have subdivided the source code into multiple categories: kernel+drivers, tools, productivity software, etc. etc., and then applied the various models to them.
Just my 2 bits.
BTW, here [nasa.gov] is the google-found page which has the quote I stole. Plus, it gives a nice, albeit brief, overview of COCOMO.
-d
Re:His Paper Is Bunk (Score:2)
No, he's right (Score:2)
Re:No, he's right (Score:2)
Re:No, he's right (Score:1)
Re:His Paper Is Bunk (Score:1)
Re:His Paper Is Bunk (Score:2)
Re:His Paper Is Bunk. You're right! (Score:5, Interesting)
I also ran the program over the abiword plugins directory. Estimated cost to produce, $1,200,000.
Now I know from direct experience that building the main code base of the AbiWord Word Processor took about 100 times more effort than the plugins.
Cheers
Martin Sevior
AbiWord Developer
For a single project yes. (Score:1)
*) Yes i'm using the math definitions of these words, not the dictionery ones. Because the dict. ones suck.
Re: His Paper Is Bunk (Score:1)
> Basically, this means that the estimate could be anywhere from $100M->10B in true cost.
So if you're buying argue for $100M, but if you're selling then politely suggest that $10B is more accurate.
Re:His Paper Is Bunk (Score:2)
Today, a software cost estimation model is doing well if it can estimate software development costs within 20% of actual costs, 70% of the time, and on its own turf (that is, within the class of projects to which it has been calibrated)...This is not as precise as we might like, but it is accurate enough to provide a good deal of help in software engineering economic analysis and decision making.
I type this in from the dusty book sitting on my desk, which was the textbook for my last CS class in college, back in '93. Software engineering. Most useful class I ever took in college.
This is hardly an endorsement of COCOMO. (COnstructive COst MOdel) Not to slam the author of the paper, it was an interesting idea. Just don't go around thinking that his findings are entirely accurate.
Re:His Paper Is Valuable (Score:3, Insightful)
His paper is valuable, priceless even, in that it is throwing a spotlight on a part of the Open Source phenomenon that has not yet come into public discussion.
While I don't know COCOMO, I accept that his numbers are highly suspect. But you have provided a range of accuracy that corrects for this. I am very confident that any reasonable assessment of the Linux development effort is going to be greater than $100 million and less than $10 billion.
So it is indisputable that Linux is a resource whose development effort exceeds $100 million.
And no reasonable person can question that this resource is now available at very low cost to anyone or any institution, on a global level.
It is difficult to see how anyone could not recognize that the use of this resource increases global wealth. Linux does make the world pie bigger.
I think that is the real story here. Linux is a tool, a lever, that has required at least $100 million of effort to develop, but which anyone can put to work for extremely low cost. I think this kind of phrasing needs to be brought to the attention of those who are being FUDded by groups that feel threatened by Open Source.
Re:His Paper Is Bunk (Score:1, Flamebait)
Re:His Paper Is Bunk. You're Right. (Score:1)
I have the COCOMO II book, and I have used the COCOMO model for certain projects. I agree that it is not appropriate here. COCOMO was designed with a narrow focus in mind, and applied best to repeatable projects in a structured work environment. It requires you to estimate parameters for factors such as "Programmer Unfamiliarity", "Precedentedness" "Development Flexibility", "Team Cohesion", "Process Maturity", "Multisite Development", etc. Each of these fudge-factors makes it extremely difficult to correctly apply the model to someone else's work.
Also, each of these factors is likely to be different for each major component.
"I was unable to find a publicly-backed average value for overhead, also called the 'wrap rate.' This value is necessary to estimate the costs of office space, equipment, overhead staff, and so on. I talked to two cost analysts, who suggested that 2.4 would be a reasonable overhead (wrap) rate."(from here [dwheeler.com])
He is using an average overhead rate for a large corporation. He forgot to take in to account the fact that Open-Source developers (generally) don't get office space or health insurance or secretaries. They use their own equipment in their own homes. So a more reasonable overhead rate for this project would be close to 0.1.
So taking all of this in to account, he's probably off by a factor of more than 100. (If you want to know how accurate he was, compare his estimate to the actual cost of developing a Linux distro... ;)
While it might have made interesting headlines, I see little value in the actual number.
Don't be confused (Score:2, Interesting)
isn't SLOC junk? (Score:3, Interesting)
if analyzing SLOC says nothing about developer contributions, efficiency, or effectiveness - then isn't estimating value based off SLOC fundamentally flawed?
i mean, you can't have it both ways. Either SLOC shows how productive programmers are, or it doesn't.
if it does - then get over the SLOC analysis in your job reviews.
if it doesn't - then you cannot even remotely accurately guage monetary worth through SLOC.
good luck to the people trying to estimate worth of OSS. good luck to the people trying to estimate the worth of programmers.
i just don't know why people don't count 'Customer Problems Solved Over Time' as the end-all, be-all.
(and time and energy fixing software bugs doesn't count. that's not the customers problem. it's the developers)
who cares how many SLOC are in a product. how many needs of the end user does it fulfill, and how long did it take to get done from the word 'go'?
yeah, you'd need to define customer needs much more carefully than most shops do... but isn't that part of the eXtreme Programming retinue
No, SLOC isn't Junk, and You Missed the Point (Score:3, Insightful)
1) SLOC says nearly *EVERYTHING* about developer contributions. After all, the SLOC is what the developer contributes.
2) Efficiency is a measurable metric, and can be quite as simple as (SLOC/MM)-(NumBugs/MM), where MM=Man-Month.
While there is a variance in the efficiency of programmers, for any given company a median efficiency can be determined. From this, a decent cost-estimate for SLOC may be determined.
i just don't know why people don't count 'Customer Problems Solved Over Time' as the end-all, be-all.
That collected metric would have almost no utility, unless you could atomize the concept of a 'customer problem'.
"Well, it took us 6MM to craete that web-based
accounting system, so it should take us about
the same to develop these kernel drivers"
Something like the above doesn't help anyone. It doesn't help the programmers who take part in recording the data; it doesn't help the managers plan and predict the product lifecycle; it doesn't help the customer in letting him know when to expect to see the next product release.
What you failed to do was drill down further in your analysis of the problem.
Let's say you just finished putting out product "X", which solved some customer problem. Now the customer wants product "Y" to solve some other problem. How do you estimate "Y" based upon "X"?
Answer: Break it down. "X" required the following capabilities: A,B,C, and D. You recorded and tracked the amount of time it took to accomplish each capability.
Now, you break down the customer problem, "Y", and determine what it would take to solve it.
If you did a good job at atomizing the customer problem on project "X", then you should have been able to come up with an average amount of time/AtomicProblem. Apply this metric and Viola!, you should have a good idea about the scope of "Y".
Many people like to take the AtomicProblem and equate it to a SLOC estimate.
What SLOC counting does is try to establish a commonality among various projects so that future projects of various natures may be estimated using previous metrics. This is not perfect, but it should be used as an aid in determining overall project scope and costs.
i mean, you can't have it both ways. Either SLOC shows how productive programmers are, or it doesn't.
SLOC shouldn't be used to estimate programmer productivity. It should be used to estimate project productity.
-D
Re:isn't SLOC junk? (Score:2)
Inflated prices? (Score:2)
On a similar note, do the prices seem accurate, for those of you who have used this thing?
handle (Score:1)
An interesting thumbsuck (Score:5, Interesting)
Running the same SLOC figures against the statistics from the Function Points methodology and you get a different picture. You are looking at 2500 person years of effort, with a cost optimum development time of 6.5 years. However, to deal with the complexity involved you will need approximately 3000 average and 1500 above average developers (at average development rate you could expect a 13 year delivery!). Total price tag: around $2 billion (that's 2e9, in case your definition of billion is different).
Of course, this is still a very skewed figure. There is no accounting for the quality of code (at the end of such a complex development cycle, you could expect as many as 7 million defects!), and both FP and COCOMO estimate development effort inclusive of design work and documentation, which in OpenSource typically don't match those in mature commercial development environments (from which the FP and COCOMO statistics are derived).
There is also a huge, and invalid, assumption made by the author, regarding the application of COCOMO (and my FP calculations suffer the same problem). The complexity of a system is MORE than the sum of its parts. This is because developer productivity declines as system complexity increases.
At 10,000 FP, as developer is often only 60% as productive compared to 1,000 FP. The situation is obviously far worse at 300,000 FP (the entire distribution), yet the kernel itself only weighs in at around 20,000 FP. And even then, clear modularisation reduces complexity for individual developers. So it is grossly unfair to base calculations on the system as a whole.
The kernel (around 2.5 MLOC) as a single system would be a task for 300 skilled developers over around 3 years, while the Gimp (around 500 KLOC, still near the top of the list in size) would be looking at 50 developers over 18 months. More complex projects need relatively more time and more developers. Doing all these projects in parallel (assuming it were possible - which is isn't because of dependancies, and that's another factor) would take less than the most complex task (kernel = 3 years) and relatively less developers than estimated based on the complexity of that task (30 MLOC / 2.5 MLOC * 300 developers = max 3600 for entire distribution). Max cost: 3600 * 3 * $55k = $594 million.
And you're STILL not accounting for the fact that employing someone costs a lot more than just paying a salary. Which puts all estimates (mine and the authors) up.
Re:An interesting thumbsuck (Score:2)
Man, what a bargain! Over two thousand man years of effort for only $1,024!
Of course, the poster meant 10e9, not 2e9. Or 2e30, I guess, but I'm assuming 10e9.
Re:An interesting thumbsuck (Score:1)
2e9 is a short form of 2 * 10^9, ya know...
So, yes, he was right...
Re:An interesting thumbsuck (Score:2)
Really? No, I didn't know. Ooooops....
Re:An interesting thumbsuck (Score:1)
as everybody knows : (Score:2, Insightful)
Linux is free (as in beer) if you time is worthless.
</flamebait>
Linux's true cost: (Score:4, Funny)
Lies, damned lies, and statistics (Score:3, Funny)
"Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. 14% of people know that."
Worrying? (Score:1)
Does anybody else find it worrying that the kernel is by far the largest component of RHL? I kinda expected it to be one of the smaller of the large projects; way smaller than the likes of KDE / GNOME / Gimp / etc..
Debian 10k packages (Score:1)
value? (Score:2)
a nifty little formula which analyzes the actual FUNCTION of a program to figure out how much it's worth is all well and good, but it doesn't mean anything. I bet the functional worth of Internet Explorer is quite a lot, but no one's willing to pay for it, so it's, in reality, worth nothing.
Re:value? (Score:2, Informative)
I bet if it was an exlusive licence, M$ whould shell it up
What would M$ pay (Score:1)
Fun but meaningless... (Score:2)
If you are going to take the entire design cost into one copy, ok, so let's also add the cost of the CD (probably five billion or so in development cost) and the cost of the Microprocessor used to beta-test: around 50 billion I am guessing. Quite an expensive copy of RedHat.
The serious point is: to be at all meaningful, "cost" needs to be divided by number of users over the lifetime of the product. I would love to see those stats (and compare them to MS).
I venture Linux would still outvalue MS on that basis (if only because there are fewer users).
Michael
visible man, with invisible shirt (Score:4, Funny)
Note to Mr. Wheeler: when your shirt is the same color as the background of your web site, you might want to put a thin border around the picture with your favorite free image editing software.. though I'm wondering why exactly your picture is there at all..
Of course it's a billion dollars. (Score:2)
You do the math.
--Blair
The software industry is losing BILLIONS! (Score:1)
Wow! (Score:2)
damages incurred.. (Score:2)
Software is not worth "SLOC" (Score:2)
Linux saves software cost. Also linux saves you from NIMDA. But linux means more expenses in tech team.
So value of linux is =
Value of Windows
+ Value that would be lost due to NIMDA, etc
- Cost of tech department difference
Which I guess is "much" more than $1G in total.
cost to develop != market value (Score:2)
But what could you sell the software for?
Nothing. It's market value is zero - because it's market is a Linux box, and we all know that nobody will pay for software on Linux, right?
Unfair! (Score:1)
Maybe we should call it Mozilla/Linux :-) (Score:2)
Since the second largest part of the system is now Mozilla and not gcc mabye we should stop calling it GNU/Linux and start calling it Mozilla/Linux.
Vanguard
Utterly ridiculous (Score:2)
Counting MySQL, PHP, etc. lines of code as part of the OS is misleading -- did he count MS SQL, Access, etc. and other pieces of software which could be bundled with a particular flavor of Windows? Consumer Windows OS distribution contains a lot more application code (e.g. Office bundled, vendor-supplied drivers/goodies/etc.) than the 'stock' Windows code numbers listed in his comparisons. Further Windows does not contain individual drivers for every single piece of hardware out there, it has some generic drivers and then relies upon you vendor to supply the drivers for them, which is typically free. How many vendor-supplied drivers vs. homebrew are in Linux?
Further, he bases his cost as if Red Hat 7.x was a complete rebuild -- as if every single line of code was re-written from the previous version, so therefore so-much-ever-million-man-minutes went into making it is wrong. Someone invented the wheel many (tens of?) thousands of years ago. I bet a lot of man hours have been spent refining the wheel. Do auto manufacturers include that into the cost of cars? Do they make you pay for 10,000 years of refinement from the rock-with-a-hole-in-it to wagon wheels to the run-flat tires of today? No, they include the cost of the materials that went into making it and certainly *some* R time, but that cost calculation is determined from various sources, not 'how many molecules of rubber are in my tire'.
His LOC calculation is misleading as well.
if( something )
{
stuff
}
else
{
stuff
}
Contain 4 superfluous lines of code. According to his calculations I did 2x more work than if I wrote it like this:
if( something )
stuff
else
stuff
If you're frisky you can write it in a single line:
if( something ) { stuff } else { stuff }
Why this article was even mentioned here is beyond me. If it I could moderate it I'd put it at (-1: Stupid).
Yeah, right. (Score:5, Insightful)
So either I'm doing enough work to be worth several hundred thousand dollars a year, or this thing is complete nonsense.
Re:Yeah, right. (Score:2)
Wow! (Score:2)
Wow! Apparently I can do the work of four normal programmers... time to talk to my boss about a raise!
Responses from the author!! (Score:5, Informative)
I don't see what all the fuss is about... (Score:1)
Let see now: the size is five letters (thank god I don't have to use my other hand!) and the cost is of course "Free" (look ma... no hands!)
What. A. Load. Of. Bollocks. (Score:4, Interesting)
We worked out that it took 8 MAN YEARS to write some code.
That's all well and good, but it's been mostly me writing it on 37.5-hour weeks for the past 10 months.
This is a big "duh" in my book.
Re:Good Lord (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good Lord (Score:1)
LOL, take that breath
For awhile I was trying to look for and send timely news articles in hopes of getting recent news up on slashdot. Out of the the 3 I sent all 3 were rejected. Ok, thats fine I thought, it must not be a good slashdot story. Then, all 3 stories get accepted by someone else, albeit days later.
> but even the crappy slashdot search
Then why did you use it?
The
The reason I complained here about slashdot was that I don't want to continue to see it degrade. I have been in the process of persuading friends into the whole linux/OS thing and with slashdot(for better or worse) being the "news" site for OS software had them reading it daily. The last time I asked one particular friend if he had seen such and such story he said that he quit reading
*sigh* I guess by your logic I should just give up and quit coming here. Should I quit voting too?