I remember going to one of those cattle-call hiring events. I wanted to speak with the Intel compiler guy and when I got up to him, all he said was “Ganapathi”. I actually knew who/what hw was talking about. So, has Intel killed their own compiler toolset? Joe McGuckin ViaNet Communications joe@via.net 650-207-0372 cell 650-213-1302 office 650-969-2124 fax > On Jul 15, 2021, at 12:33 PM, Theodore Y. Ts'o wrote: > > On Thu, Jul 15, 2021 at 11:07:10AM -0400, Clem Cole wrote: >> In fact, [I can not say I personally know this - but have read internal >> memos that make the claim], Intel pays for more Linux developers and now >> LLVM developers than any firm. What's interesting is that Intel does not >> really directly sell its HW product to end-users. We sell to others than >> use our chips to make their products. We have finally moved to the >> support model for the compilers (I've personally been fighting that battle >> for 15 years). > > That claim is probably from the data collected from the Linux > Foundation, which publishes these stats every year or two. The most > recent one is here: > > https://www.linuxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020_kernel_history_report_082720.pdf > > The top ten organizations responsible for commits from 2007 -- 2019: > > (None) 11.95% > Intel 10.01% > Red Hat 8.90% > (Unknown) 4.09% > IBM 3.79% > SuSE 3.49% > Linaro 3.17% > (Consultant) 2.96% > Google 2.79% > Samsung 2.58% > > "None" means no organizational affiliation (e.g., hobbyists, students, > etc.) "Unknown" means the organization affiliation couldn't be > determined. > > For more recent data, if you look at the commits for the 5.10 release > (end of 2020), the top ten list by organizations looks like this: > > Huawei 8.9% > Intel 8.0% > (Unknown) 6.6% > (None) 4.9% > Red Hat 5.7% > Google 5.2% > AMD 4.3% > Linaro 4.1% > Samsung 3.5% > IBM 3.2% > > For the full list and more stats, see: https://lwn.net/Articles/839772/ > >> So back to my basic point ... while giving the *behavior* a name, the *idea >> *of "Open Source" is really not anything new. > > I do think there is something which is radically new --- which is that > it's not a single company publishing all of the source code for a > particular OS, whether it's System/360 or the PDP-8 Disk Operating > System, or whatever. > > In other words, it's the shared nature of the collaboration, which > partially solves the question of "who pays" --- the answer is, "lots > of companies, and they do so when it makes business sense for them to > do so". Intel may have had the largest number of contributions to > Linux historically --- but that was still 10%, and it was eclipsed by > people with no organizational affliation, and in the 5.10 kernel > Huawei slightly edged out Intel with 8.9% vs 8.0% contributions. > > I completely agree with you that one of the key questions is the > business case issue. Not only who pays, but how do they justify the > software investment to the bean counters? Of course, the "Stone Soup" > story predates computers, so this certainly isn't a new business > model. And arguably the X Window Systems and the Open Software > Foundation also had a similar model where multiple companies > contributed to a common codebase, with perhaps mixed levels of > success. > > The thing which Linux has managed to achieve, however, is the fact > that there is a large and diverse base of corporate contributions. > That to me is what makes the Linux model so interesting, and has been > a reason for its long-term sustainability. > > Other companies may have been making their source code availble, but > the underlying business model behind their "source available" practices > was quite different. > > Cheers, > > - Ted