Linux valued at $10.9 billion

[I-75]

Linux valued at $10.9 billion
Oct. 22, 2008

http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS6986646445.html

Have you got some loose change in your pocket, and dreams of building a better operating system? It would take about 25 years, nearly 60,000 developer-years, and $10.8B to re-create a distribution like Fedora 9, according to a new report from the Linux Foundation.

[Grant A.]

Keep in mind a lot of those developers for the kernel were payed by good companies like IBM, Red Hat, Novell, and Java. I think the current census on kernel developers is about 90% corporate. :)

[earthpigg]

according to a new report from the Linux Foundation.



hmmmmmm

[TBOL3]

Good news, I just conducted a study. I'm worth about $13 trillion. That's amazing, if I were to sell myself, I could pay off the US national debt (and then some). BTW, this study is conducted by me.

[Kernel Sanders]

More info here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/22/what_is_linux_worth/

Pretty amazing that we have a free and open source OS if you think about it. Especially considering it would cost BILLIONS to start from scratch and make another one.

Linux FTW! :KS

[Sealbhach]

Well, it would cost a lot to pay people to make this software. A big amount, a colossal amount.

Now if we could only get $10bn worth of marketing given away for free....


.

[Eisenwinter]

Good news, I just conducted a study. I'm worth about $13 trillion. That's amazing, if I were to sell myself, I could pay off the US national debt (and then some). BTW, this study is conducted by me.
Respek.
+1 man.

[Polygon]

on the article they explained how exactly they got the figure.



How, you might wonder, is it possible to put a price tag or a timeline on the massive amounts of work behind open source software, given that development burdens are shouldered by so many different companies, organizations, and individuals? Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Foundation turned to open source software tools. They used David Wheeler's SLOC tools, aka "sloccount." Sloccount regresses a source code tree, tallying up lines of code. It then uses Barry Boehm's "CoCoMo" (constructive cost model) algorithm to estimate various metrics. Just for fun, here's sloccount's output for the source code tree that powers this website:

Total Physical Source Lines of Code (SLOC) = 19,894
Development Effort Estimate, Person-Years (Person-Months) = 4.62 (55.45)
(Basic COCOMO model, Person-Months = 2.4 * (KSLOC**1.05))
Schedule Estimate, Years (Months) = 0.96 (11.50)
(Basic COCOMO model, Months = 2.5 * (person-months**0.38))
Estimated Average Number of Developers (Effort/Schedule) = 4.82
Total Estimated Cost to Develop = $ 624,166
(average salary = $56,286/year, overhead = 2.40).
SLOCCount, Copyright (C) 2001-2004 David A. Wheeler

[sethvath]

56k per annum is actually a reasonable amount, provided everyone who contributed lives in the united states and has an appropriate Bsc Cs.

[S0VERE1GN]

i wouldn't pay that much for linux.....im too cheap :popcorn: