After reading the latest update on Linux kernel development, highlighted by 451 Group colleague Dan Kusnetzky, I have a few observations to share.

First off, to answer Dan’s question, ‘Are you surprised?,’ I don’t think there were any real surprises. We see a list of the companies that are most aggressively and persistently pushing Linux and also a legacy lead for the vendors that embraced Linux long ago — Red Hat, IBM, Novell and Intel — compared to those that took longer to come around or are newer to the scene — SGI, Fujitsu, Monta Vista, Google. Another thing that stands out is the increasing number of hardware, virtualization and mobile vendors that are among significant Linux contributors — Analog Devices, Freescale, MIPS Technologies, Marvell, Movial and Nokia, for example.

But what really stands out to me is the leading contributing entity to the Linux kernel: ‘none.’ This, along with the ‘unknown’ category that slips in between top contributor Red Hat and second-largest contributor IBM, accounts for more than a quarter of the kernel contributions (18.2% from none and another 7.6% from unknown). Does this mean that pizza-eating developers who don’t make any money are the main contributors to Linux? Certainly not. We know that most open source software developers have ‘day jobs’ working on other software, sometimes proprietary. Still, given our research on community Linux and its impact on the paid Linux market, it is interesting to see that there is still plenty of community development going on, even while corporate support and involvement continues to grow. This also coincides with survey findings from open source support vendor OpenLogic that indicate while customers prefer open source software with commercial support options, they also prefer software developed and backed by multiple vendors or a community.

One other point on the latest contributor report. Similar to last year’s report release and my attendance at the first Linux Plumbers Conference, we heard complaints about Ubuntu distributor Canonical’s contributions, or lack thereof, to the Linux kernel. So by this logic, Microsoft is contributing more and doing more for Linux than Canonical? Microsoft’s recent contribution of GPLv2 Linux drivers, delays notwithstanding, marks perhaps a greater kernel contribution from Microsoft than what is coming to the kernel from Canonical. However, I would reiterate that by contributing, refining, advancing and innovating outside of the kernel — which appears to have plenty of contributors, momentum and growth — Canonical is helping stretch Linux in new directions, such as desktop PCs and netbooks and cloud computing environments.

In the end, all contributions to the Linux kernel and the Linux OS have significance. The detailed reports so thoughtfully and well laid out by the good folks at the Linux Foundation can be useful and enlightening to let us know who is developing the core of the open source operating system (as well as how fast — an already fast rate of change in which the number of lines of code added to the kernel daily nearly tripled since 2008). However, the report should not serve as the sole indicator of an individual or organization’s contribution to Linux. If it does, then hats off to ‘none’ and ‘unknown.’