9/28/2016 The Linux Kernel Developers Community Jean DELVARE SuSE R&D, Kernel support Solutions Linux 2007, January 31st, 2007

Organization

Global Organization (1) ● Linux Foundation ● Merge of the OSDL (Open Source Development Labs) and the FSG (Free Standards Group) in January 2007 ● Employs 45 people including Linus Torvalds ● Works on the distributions standardization (LSB) ● Offers a legal protection ● kernel.org ● Distributes the kernel source code ● Offers services to the developers

Global Organization (2) ● Large companies ● Red Hat, Novell, Oracle... ● IBM, Intel, SGI, HP... ● All the others ● Small businesses ● Universities, researchers, students ● Public services ● Individuals

Some Figures

Statistics for year ● 20,788 changes ("patches") ● 1356 contributors 2006 ● 27,689 changes (+33%) ● 1771 contributors (+30%) ● 400 maintainers ● 116,040 posts to the LKML (+17%)

Contributors casualonce a quarter once a month once a week several each week

Contributions Core contributors (76%) Regular contributors (20%) Casual contributors (4%)

Development Flow Core maintainers Subsystem maintainer Subsystem maintainer Subsystem maintainer Driver maintainer Driver Maintainer Developer Driver Maintainer Driver Maintainer

Development Model

In Search Of The Perfect Model Users want: ● A stable kernel ● Fixes for bugs that affect them ● Support for their new hardware ● Optimizations which help them ● No regression on upgrade Developers want: ● To see their work tested and used quickly ● To avoid doing the same thing twice

Old Development Model Two branches: ● Stable branch (e.g. 2.4) ● Development branch (e.g. 2.5) If the separation is strict: ● Development branch receives little testing and quickly becomes unstable (vicious circle) ● Major improvements awaited for a long time ● New hardware unsupported by the stable branch ● Divergence makes it difficult to backport bugs ● Stable branch not functional enough for some If the separation is loose: ● Developers time shared between both branches ● Stable branch not stable enough for some

Code Volume

New Development Model (1) To each one his/her job: ● Developers of the community develop. ● Distributions do support and maintenance. ● Users who want stability over all should trust their distribution. New model: ● Single branch ● Stable enough to be broadly used and serve as a base for future distributions. ● Model can be refined over time.

New Development Model (2) rc rc 2 - rc 6 - rc mm-mm -mm-mm -mm-mm Stable branches Testing branch Integration branch 20 sept nov. 2006

New Development Model (3)

Questions?