One year ago, Linux kernel development was almost predominately Red Hat’s game. This day, Red Hat’s lead has dipped considerably, according to a report just released by the Linux Foundation.

Red Hat continues to contribute/sponsor 11.2 percent of the Linux kernel’s development, down from 14.4 percent in 2007, while Novell has jumped from an anemic 3.6 percent in 2007 to a robust 8.9 percent in 2008. Perhaps not surprisingly, Novell’s share of the Linux market has grown considerably in that same time, with Novell reporting a 200 percent increase in its Linux business over the past year.

(Credit: Linux Foundation)

So, while Novell crows about its rise in revenue market share in the Linux market, it’s the company’s development market share that I view as the true leading indicator of its business. Linux sales are up 200 percent, while Linux development is up 250 percent. See a correlation?

In open source, it’s all about “owning” the source of code, not necessarily the source code.

Importantly, it’s not just Novell and Red Hat who contribute. As detailed statistics demonstrate, the Linux kernel is perhaps the world’s largest, most distributed development effort, reflecting its increasing importance to an ever-widening array of disparate parties:

… Source:The Open Road

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 at 7:09 pm and is filed under Business and Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.