Demography of Linux Kernel Developers

Overview

Several success stories of Open Source (OS) products have been seen during last decade. Due to the economical importance of the products, it is important to know who are the ones who have the largest influence to the products. Therefore, studying demography of open source projects is essential. In this paper the aspect is studied with respect to the Linux Kernel. The authors show that the influence is centered to a small number of core people, and corporates have a large impact to the development. Moreover, it enumerate the most influential companies of the Linux Kernel community. Besides influence, the authors have touched the nature of development from the point of view of the actual code.