Torvalds: Linux kernel developers have no problem finding jobs

Among Linux kernel developers, there are more professional programmers than ever before. The proportion of unpaid volunteers reached a historic low, according to a new report, “ Who Writes Linux 2015, ” published last night.

According to the Linux Foundation, only 11.8% of Linux kernel developers last year were declared as unpaid volunteers. In 2012, these were 14.6%, the downward trend has been observed for many years.

But this does not mean that "corporations are capturing Linux." Quite the contrary, this Linux captures corporations, so to speak. The point is that any system programmer who has grown to such a level that he can make reasonable changes to the Linux kernel finds himself a job without any problems. Thus, corporations specifically invite to the staff of those people who noted the patches. As a company, these people often continue to work on the Linux kernel, doing the same work as before.
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Actually, this thesis was confirmed by Linus Torvalds: “People who start writing code for the kernel very quickly find a job,” he said. Linus added that newbies among developers appear constantly, and experienced professionals often go to large companies.

“Maybe we started as an amateur project, but now we are successfully employed and continue to work on Linux,” added Torvalds.

The role of Torvalds himself in editing the code is not so big now. He personally checked only 329 patches since the release of the 3.10 kernel, that is, 0.4% of the total number of patches.

General statistics from the report:

• Over the past 10 years, about 12,000 developers from more than 1,200 companies have participated in the development of the kernel. Over the past year and a half - more than 4,000 developers from 200 companies, half of them are newbies.

• Top 10 organizations that have contributed since the last report: Intel, Red Hat, Linaro, Samsung, IBM, SUSE, Texas Instruments, Vision Engraving Systems, Google, Renesas. The women's organization FOSS Outreach Program for Women is located on the 13th place (1.5% of all patches in the core 3.11).

• The most “loaded” version was 3.15 (see table).



The speed of making changes to the Linux kernel is 7.71 patches per hour.