Intel claims No. 2 Linux contributor spot as hedge against Microsoft

In 2007 Red Hat stood on top of the Linux kernel contributor list with room to spare. At 12.7 percent of the Linux kernel contributed by Red Hat (measured in terms of lines changed), IBM was the runner-up at a comparatively distant 5.9 percent. In 2008, Red Hat slipped a little but maintained the top spot (11.2 percent), with Novell making a burst into second place at 8.9 percent.

In 2009, things get more interesting, with Intel making a serious challenge to claim the top spot in Linux kernel contributions.

Red Hat, Novell, and IBM all have substantial software businesses, with heavy investments in Linux, so it makes sense that they'd contribute heavily to the Linux kernel. But according to new data Jonathan Corbet of LWN.net announced at the Ottawa Linux Symposium on Wednesday, Intel has surged from 2.3 percent in 2007 to 4.1 percent in 2008 to 6.9 percent in 2009.

(Credit: Jonathan Corbet (LWN.net))

Red Hat still sits atop the corporate pile of contributors with 12.3 percent, but within the next two years it's possible that we'll see Intel top it. Since Corbet last compiled his kernel data in 2008, 2,559 developers added 4.8 million lines of code. Among the 339 employers found in Corbet's data, Intel ranks second.

This really is remarkable. Why is a hardware company, albeit one with significant software assets, making such an earnest effort to contribute to open-source software?

Intel's commitment, as Dirk Hohndel, Intel's chief Linux and open-source technologist, told me, signals Linux's critical importance to a broad community:

It's a sign of the strength of the Linux community that contributors come from all sorts of places. This shows how important Linux is.

Yes, but why Intel? Suffice it to say, Intel doesn't account for its Linux development as "charitable giving."

Indeed, John Treadway suggests that "at the very least [Intel's kernel development] means Intel-based platforms will continue to have the advantage," because presumably Intel chips inside servers, Netbooks, desktops, mobile phones, and more will run Linux as well or better than they do Windows.

Intel's Linux commitment, in short, could be a hedge on its longstanding partnership with Microsoft.

Or maybe it's more. For years Intel made a fortune buddying up with Microsoft in the so-called Wintel duopoly. The problem with this pairing is that Microsoft's portion of the pie cuts into Intel's to an ever-widening degree. And it's not just Microsoft: the more an original equipment manufacturer spends on software the less is left over for Intel's hardware.

So, as SAP's Dirk Riehle remarks, Intel's Linux strategy frees up more money to spend on its chips, a theme Riehle has touched on before with reference to IBM's commitment to Linux.

Watch for Intel to further increase its commitment to Linux, paying more and more developers like Jeff Dike to give lots of software away.

This makes the developers happy, but it also makes Intel happy. The more great open-source software out there, the more money is available to buy Intel hardware. Microsoft is the casualty, but that's business. One company's complement is another company's core. That's the way open-source capitalism works.

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.

[freemarket--2008]

Looks more like they are number four according to the chart.

[freemarket--2008]

Intel chips are also used in servers and supercomputers which quite often run Linux. Presumably, Intel would like it's chips to perform as well as possible when running Linux for these systems.

[Mr. Dee]

Geez, these wild wishful thinking imaginations are just getting the best of you Matt. I assume the mythical 'Year of the Linux' is coming to a PC near you this fall. Come on, no matter how much these Companies decide to invest in open source, the choice is still in the hands of the user. With 1.2 billion PC's already running Windows, I think they have made it quite clear. With Windows 7 waiting in the wings I think the OpenSource Community should just realize their platform is for a minor few and the hobbyist in a basement somewhere.

[i-arman]

I would like to point out that of the top 500 supercomputers, 443 run some version of Linux. 29% of servers are shipped with Linux, and it's estimated that nearly 80% of internet servers run Linux. <br /> <br />The desktop market may not feature much open source software, but honestly, the desktop market is a low margin business. The server market has a lot more to offer to a hardware company. Would you rather sell a mid-grade desktop, or a mid-grade server cluster?

[sanjayb]

And let's not forget handheld devices (i.e: smartphones) that could be running a combination of both Linux and Intel. Open your mind up a bit Dee.

[Random_Walk]

Intel does have an entire group dedicated to Linux and Open Source project (named quite aptly "The Open Source Group", IIRC) - they have quite a few facilities located up here in Oregon (IIRC, the group is up in Hillsboro), so I'm not really surprised to see that they rank so high on the contributors' list. <br /><br />This is why I had said in a different CNET article that Intel was very vendor-neutral - it's in their best interest to be.

[odubtaig]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Microsoft is so heavily tied into the Intel platform these days that moving from it would be a feat on the scale of the Apollo programme. In the meantime, so long as their chips still run Windows, Intel can support anything else they want. Intel may benefit greatly from Microsoft's sales but they don't need them so long as that which replaces the Microsoft sale also runs on Intel chips.

[vikinzer]

I have to say this makes me very very happy. This also would account for a lot of the performance gains Linux seems to have made in recent years, especially on the desktop. I have been increasingly awed by the performance on each new release of the major distros on the desktop, and I'm still chugging my old server in my back room running 256 megs of ram and a Pentium 4. It serves me well. It would not serve me well at all on windows.<br /><br />I think this model makes for an interesting competitive environment. If other hardware companies begin to follow Intel's model it could have a profound effect on Microsoft. (I notice Atheros is in this list). Microsoft has to pay to have all this performance work done. That's a lot of overhead. As the centralized desktop becomes less and less important I think we're going to see platforms like Linux/Chrome/that thing that's being announced tomorrow by Corporation rocks my socks off start to really bleed Windows. I don't think Windows is going away any time soon. It's going to be a very slow bleed.<br /><br />My personal hope is that somewhere down the line Microsoft weans itself from the crack that is their Office/Windows revenue and begins to produce a product that doesn't have such huge development overhead. Let's be honest Linux is ready as a system for the desktop, but Microsoft has inertia on it's side. Consumers would be much better off if Linux were to gain enough market share to shake some of these archaic development patters out of MS's process. Even the consumers who choose to continue to use Windows.

[w0rdwarri0r]

The author of this article should do some more research.<br /><br />Intel is developing a Linux distro for netbooks called Moblin. It's optimized for small screens and represents a fairly radical rethinking of user interface paradigms.<br /><br />The reason Intel wants to get into the netbook business is that its hardware margins are too thin what with the commoditization of the PC hardware business.<br /><br />Intel wants to provide a complete solution, with the all the margins of a value-added product.<br /><br />That's the real reason they're investing in Mobilin and the Linux kernel.

[TigerCliff]

Matt, this is an interesting post. I generally agree that this sheds light on some useful information - who's investing in Linux and, therefore (let's be honest), trying to affect or influence the outcome for themselves and their customers.<br /><br />I do believe, however, that all statistics can be deceiving. I've seen presentations at open source conferences (by people with nothing to gain or lose) that have normalized these kind of numbers to take out corrections, debugging, resubmissions, iterations, minor tweaks, etc. For example, if someone corrects their own line of code, that resubmission could count has another contribution in these stats.<br /><br />Honestly, I don't know exactly how these numbers where calculated but there's some junk often in these types of reports. And "normalized" numbers would probably produce a very similar list -- the same big companies, but the percentages of activity could reflect real contributions vs. lines of code changed.<br /><br />Just food for thought.

[ian.waring]

Nothing to do with who Alan Cox works for then, having left Red Hat some time back?

[jspaleta]

Where's Google on the Corporate contributor list? Did they move up in the rankings from last year?<br /><br />-jef

[AdamWill]

The introduction puts a baffling spin on the numbers it supplies. Let's see, Year One, Red Hat 12.7%, second place 5.9%. Year Two, Red Hat 11.2%, second place 8.9%. Year Three, Red Hat 12.3%, second place 6.9%.<br /><br />So the first year gap is 6.8%, the second year gap is 2.3%, third year gap is 5.4%. Yet the introduction suggests the third year is 'more interesting' (than the second, by comparison) with Intel making a 'serious challenge to claim the top spot'. Huh? There was clearly a bigger challenge in the second year from Novell, not in the third year from Intel. Not suggesting any particular conspiracy here, I was just a bit baffled by the numerical facts behind the analysis.

[odubtaig]

I think this year has been a busy one for Intel where Linux is concerned. Not only has there been heavy development on the Moblin platform but enhancements such as support for VPro will bulk out the numbers.<br /><br />This does raise the question as to where Intel will be next year if they don't bring out any major new architechture enhancements but it emphasises that they do not want to be left behind on the O/S support front. AMD, as well as making not insignifican contributions to the kernel, have also contributed to GCC to keep their hardware as well supported as they can (although this is almost certainly limited by their smaller size and financial problems).

[anonymuos]

Most of the code must be power management optimizations. Why don't they tip off Microsoft to make similar changes?

[raywkirk]

A couple of observations: <br />1) the number of lines changed seem to run in the low thousands. Yet you state <br />"Since Corbet last compiled his kernel data in 2008, 2,559 developers added 4.8 million lines of code." <br />Therefore, it seems to me that those developers contributed the overwhelming amount of code to Linux and not ANY of these corporations. <br />2) You make no mention of the USER base. I have noticed over the last few years a growing number of foreign governments, domestic government agencies and private organizations that have adopted or are in the process of adopting Linux. Hell, even President Obama called for an investigation into the feasability of using open source software more widely in the U. S. government. <br />3) Although it may not be ready for the average user yet (and this is quite debatable), it will be soon. In my opinion, there are only a very few applications that need to appear to drastically accelerate the process. Such as Quicken (the Linux clones don't quite cut it yet). <br />4) Windows 7 is going to cost money. This will be a strong incentive for many people to finally take the plunge into Linux.

[gisabun]

Problem with the Linux community is that it's too fractured with too many small distros where some don't offer any contributions. I'm not saying there should be just one distro but with so many to choose from and every Linux "expert" saying this distro is better than that, it's too much infighting. <br /> <br />Now you know why the combined Linux share of the computer market sits at roughly 1%. People were raving about Linux making huge gains a decade ago. That obviously didn't happen.

[BroRed]

I have been saying for the past two or three years that Intel is not just being nice. Though this was targeted at AMD's being so much more closed than Intel. Intel understands that it behooves hardware vendors to give away code that makes their devices work.<br /><br /><br />Regards,<br />Brotherred