Re: os discuss (http://www.osopinion.com/perl/story/7263.html)

["Robert G. Brown" <bob@xxxxxxx>]

>>From my perspective, Linus appears to sit in his great
>white throne and judge what stays and what goes.


>If you don't belong to the clique then what you wrote gets
>pitched....
What "clique"? The people named in /usr/src/linux/MAINTAINERS?
Someone else? people who work WITH those people?

> I would be surprised to discover that Microsoft's legion of
>programmers was much smaller than the "in" clique which modifies
>Linux code.
I have it on fairly good authority (not from Bill's desktop or anyt-
hing, but someone in Redmond) that there are less than 80 people who 
support and maintain the NTOS kernel and derivative bits of software.

A lot depends on how you count this.  The Linux MAINTAINERS file lists 
over 150 contributors (more in 7.0) contributors, but these are people
who are often in charge of teams, and submit on behalf of their team.
The MS people have probablysomewhat higher turnover, and vendors do work
on a lot of drivers. The MAINTAINER body-count includes a lot of
driver authors, but with a volunteer organization, you tend to find that
contributed code comes from all over (driver author finds bug in kernel, 
writes no memo, has no juristictional battle, submits kernel patch, 
everyone's happy).

So the formal body-count issue is hard to settle, but it looks like Linux 
has more bodies (thus more eyeballs) working on these issues. We also
understand that most circumstances <understatement mode=Churchillian> 
tend to favor more people looking at Linux kernel source than NT kernel 
source. 
</understatement>

>In addition, there is a large standards document which
>must be followed before the code is even considered
>acceptable.
There is? Where? How does it compare in size to other
documents, intended to set standards for similarly size
projects?

>It's beginning to look a lot like Microsoft from here.
>However, having never attempted to contribute anything,
>I can only speculate based on my feelings.
Yeah. Work at MS for 6 months, then contribute some stuff to almost
any OSS project. THEN write a comparison. The rather large differences 
are an outgrowth of different history, values, culture in the group. You 
can't see those on an org chart, but they're the most important differences
of all.



                                                              Regards,
                                                              ---> RGB <---