AddToAny

Share/Save
Home » Blogs » vaibhav's blog

So you think, Linux is Free

Submitted by vaibhav on Tue, 03/02/2010 - 15:18
Posted in

linux-logo.jpgWe have been using Linux for more then 18 years, without paying a single penny, Thanks to Open Source. There are more than 137000 registered machines, which are using Linux as their Operating System. Linux is the work of thousand of developers working as a Community. But have you ever wondered, what would be the development cost of Linux. Open Source does'nt mean that its Development Cost is zero. Two researchers have estimated the cost of replicating Linux kernel from the scratch at about 1.4 billion USD! Who said Open Source is free?

Jesus Garcia and Isabel Alonso from the University of Oviedo have estimated the development cost that would take approximately 1000 top notch developers around 14 years to replicate the giant Linux kernel. The cost estimation was done using Constructive Cost Model(COCOMO) 81 algorithm and the whole experiment revealed only the estimates and it was not intended for actual use.

But the point is that the sheer amount of development costs, the time span and the developers needed is mind boggling. Does this ever cross your mind when you use Linux?

You can read the complete report here.

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly. If you have a Gravatar account, used to display your avatar.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <p> <span> <div> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <img> <map> <area> <hr><br> <br /> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <table> <tr> <td> <em> <b> <u> <i> <strong><font> <del> <ins> <sub> <sup> <quote> <blockquote> <pre> <address> <code> <cite> <embed> <object> <param> <strike> <caption>
  • You can enable syntax highlighting of source code with the following tags: <c>, <cpp>, <csharp>, <drupal5>, <drupal6>, <java>, <javascript>, <mysql>, <php>, <python>, <ruby>, <sql>, <tsql>, <vbnet>, <xml>. Beside the tag style "<foo>" it is also possible to use "[foo]". PHP source code can also be enclosed in <?php ... ?> or <% ... %>.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

More information about formatting options