According to the latest annual report from the Linux Foundation (LF), less than 3% of its budgetary resources are allocated to the thing it is named after!
Well yeah only 3% go to the kernel. Most of the rest seems to be going to everything else required for a functional OS. The kernel alone is fairly useless.
the kernel alone is fairly useless
Any essential part is usually fairly useless without the other parts
Seems to be going to Corporate Operations, Event Services, Project Support. But little goes to Linux kernel, and project infrastructure.
Yeah, the money’s “going to” two of the least funded categories in the chart. 🙄
That’s i believe is diversity in OS market. More funding to NetBSD and other alternative OSes should be done.
Yeah I was wanting more. This looks like things that support development. Being open-source, a lot of developers have day jobs elsewhere so kinda makes sense the line items for paying them might be small.
Was this coming from within the kernel community?
It’s nice of this poster to ignore the $181m spent on “other projects” and conclude this is some kind of scam. If we include the Linux Kernel with the other projects part, that’s about 67%, or two thirds, of their expenses are paying for various and assorted open source projects. Among them the kernel. So if you’re a “cash and cash alone” person, then 2/3rds of your money is still going as cash to software projects.
And if we include things like community tooling and project services, which may help a project in ways beyond just cash that becomes about 78% in total, or over three quarters.
That’s pretty good, I think, but to each their own.
Mhm, I think this is more complicated than it looks. The LF today isn’t a direct Linux kernel funding body and more an umbrella for open-source governance (infrastructure, events, certification, security work, to name a few). So the other 97% are not necessarily wasted. Also, many kernel developers are paid outside of the LF by companies like Red Hat, Google, AMD, SUSE, Microsoft. So in reality there is alot more cash flowing towards Linux kernel development. A better/sharper criticism would be that the LF has become an industry consortium for “enterprise open source” or so, rather than a Linux-centered foundation. The counterpoint on the other Hand is that this founded infrastructure is exactly what allows large-scale open-source projects to function in the first place.
yeah, some of the budget goes to what looks like maintaining infrastructure that other projects use (i assume). but the 12% AI and 4% blockchain are pretty indefensible…
I love crypto and open source tooling around it, what is supposed to be indefensible about it?
There could well be a kernel of valid criticism in it but this article is so exaggerated and strident, that I can’t take it seriously. It’s like people who scream GOVERNMENT WASTE about every budget line item that is not obviously important to someone who has only the most simple and ignorant understanding of it.
Corpos doing what corpos do better.
12% to AI
Yikes
that was the most worrying part of it to me; nothing is safe from ai apparently.
Linus and Greg aren’t willing to save anything either.
They rolled over on the American government’s demand to expell Russian contributors like puppies begging for a treat.
Linux has become as captured as any Western institution.
American
You mean Yankee
to-MAE-to
to-MAH-to
No.
America is a continent. There are more non yankees (or genocide supporters) than yankees in America.
i understand what yankee means and my use of the word “american” here was intentional.
yes, the yankee gov’t has captured linux.
a significant portion of the people in this community don’t know the word “yankee” but they’re capable of understanding it and to express the idea to them, you have to use words or expressions that fit the context this group’s frame of reference so that they can fully understand the idea you’re trying to express without it getting lost in translation; the people who exist at the intersection of multiple identities call it “code switching”.
America is the colloquial name for United States Of America. The denizens of that country are called Americans officially.
There is no continent of America. There’s North America and South America but that’s not “America”
Also as a Canadian most people are still genocide supporters. Also also, America the country is larger population wise than the rest of the countries on North America combined. So even with your broad brush of “all Americans are genocide supporters” you’re still wrong.
‘Corporate Operations’ gets double the budget of the Kernel itself.
Some people are living very well doing absolutely nothing.
eyeballing it, that all looks like stuff that an organization of that scale would have to spend money on, and better the entity and its sponsors paying instead of kernel developers
The linux foundation does not care about linux. They don’t even use it.
I can tell you from personal experience this is not true, they use linux.
I cannot challenge your personal experience. But during some live talks, they were seen using macs with macos. and some documents produced using a macos related tooling in metadata.
The people I know are engineers and devops people that all use Linux so maybe it depends on what department and team they are with.
