Linux Development: 7 Surprising Facts About Who Writes Linux Apps

By Sean Michael Kerner

Although Linus Torvalds continues to lead Linux kernel development, he is not the leading contributor. In fact, Torvalds currently ranks 101st on the latest “Who Writes Linux” report for the number of patches generated from the Linux 3.3 to the Linux 3.10 kernel releases.

Since 2012, 1,110 developers from 225 different companies have contributed code to Linux.

In terms of corporate sponsors of Linux, Red Hat leads the list, with its developers contributing 10.2 percent of all changes. Red Hat is followed by chip vendors Intel at 8.8 percent and Texas Instruments at 4.1 percent. IBM is credited with contributing 3.1 percent of code changes, Google comes in at 2.4 percent, and Oracle is at 1.3 percent.

In the Linux kernel development model, not only is there a code author, but there is also a developer reviewer who looks at the code for sign-off. From the 3.2 kernel to the Linux 3.10 kernel, developer Greg Kroah-Hartman tops the list, reviewing 12.5 percent of that code.

With each kernel release there is an increasing volume of code changes are submitted.The Linux 3.10 kernel is made up of 16,961,031 lines of code. In contrast, the Linux 3.0 kernel that was released in July of 2011 and had only 14,651,135 lines of code.

New mainline Linux kernels are released at a rapid rate that averages just over 60 days since the Linux 3.0 release in 2011.

When Linus Torvalds releases a new stable kernel, that’s not the end of that particular kernel’s release cycle. Kernels are constantly updated as bug, stability and security fixes emerge.