
Only a few vendor-paid developers do almost all open-source work - tomxor
https://www.infoworld.com/article/3268001/open-source-tools/open-source-isnt-the-community-you-think-it-is.html
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mhsabbagh
This is hilarious:

>> It is fair to say that for almost all of the projects in the CNCF, specific
vendors account for most of the development work being done.

> Not just “many” open source projects—all of them.

The author moves from an analysis written about CNCF projects to generalize a
conclusion about all open source software. What a misleading title and
content, it remains hanged without any evidence on those claims.

~~~
sonnyblarney
Definitive statements are easy to pick apart, but I think he's basically
correct. Pretty much all the open source we use are made by a tiny handful of
people. It makes sense because most software works this way anyhow, and when
there are large groups involved it takes intense coordination.

The more existential question is: are those 'peripheral' additions critical?
Because maybe that 'last mile' is superfluos, i.e. minor bugs and 'nice to
have' features, but it's possible they are key contributions.

It's possible that the 'key contributors' are like 'managers' or 'curators' of
the project, bringing in the work of others, making decisions about it,
possibly borrowing ideas from the community and 'implementing it themselves'.

~~~
trumped
> It makes sense because most software works this way anyhow

What does that mean?

~~~
prepend
It means most software projects are actually written by small teams of under
10. When you don’t count all the project staff, testing, operations, user
support, etc.

Softwareis typically just lots of small components linked together. Especially
super generalizable stuff like popular open source.

------
peterwwillis
Open source contributions are actually mostly not from the project in
question. You'll almost always depend on a mountain of other code, in the form
of the kernel, software libraries, user utilities, and so on. A lot of these
are specialized projects and have their own core developers. Your project may
be possible without them, on another platform for example, but in Linux
there's still thousands of random devs contributing to a whole.

Cloud software has suffered from NIH for a good long time now, and required
proprietary APIs to function. You have to "integrate" your app with another
app, it never just has implicit compatibility. Sad really.

~~~
kanox
That claim that "vendor-paid developers do almost all work" also fits the
Linux kernel. The kernel is very large and has many contributors but work done
by random volunteers is dwarfed by that done by large companies. This is
visible in contributor statistics:
[https://lwn.net/Articles/750054/](https://lwn.net/Articles/750054/)

For the kernel the "community" is to a very large extent a community of
companies.

~~~
mr_toad
I get the impression that many of the kernel developers in these companies
would be active in the community no matter where they worked. For example see
this interview with one of the names on the list:

‘I can't imagine doing anything else for a living after having looked into
most kernel subsystems at some point over the last 15 years.’

[https://www.linux.com/news/30-linux-kernel-
developers-30-wee...](https://www.linux.com/news/30-linux-kernel-
developers-30-weeks-arnd-bergmann)

------
tspiteri
The article uses "commercial" when it should really use "proprietary". The
open source projects mentioned are all very much commercial software.

~~~
ghaff
I'd rephrase that slightly. In many cases, there is commercial software that
makes use of many of those open source projects.

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josmala
Infoworld: "We care about your privacy" That is the headline, in an interface
which allows me to scroll 32 times so that I can disable sharing my personal
information to all the ~300+ different parties they share it by default.

------
kerng
>>The irony is that what makes open source work—and differ from commercial
software—is that only a few developers do the major work on any project.

Comparing Open Source vs. Commercial software - that's the fail of the article
right at the beginning... Apple vs Oranges... What has one to do with the
other? Maybe they meant proprietary?

~~~
vram22
Yes, good point. I've seen a few well-known/famous tech writers make that
mistake, either unknowingly or carelessly.

Open source or free software (as in speech) vs. closed source (proprietary)

and

commercial or paid / non-commercial or free software (as in beer)

are 2 X 2 (orthogonal) variations, giving 4 possibilities in total.

Odd that not many people see this. Maybe sloppy as ghaff said.

Correct me if I got it wrong, anyone, that's my understanding of "free as in
speech" vs. "free as in beer".

~~~
franciscop
I prefer libre (as in speech) and gratis (as in no cost) but it might be
because I'm Spanish.

The thing is, they are conceptually orthogonal, but in practice there's strong
correlation. It might be for many reasons, but I'd guesstimate 90+% of open
source is also non-commercial.

~~~
vram22
>but in practice there's strong correlation. It might be for many reasons, but
I'd guesstimate 90+% of open source is also non-commercial.

Your guesstimate may be right or wrong (also see sibling heavenlyblue
comment), but my point was more that those writers I mentioned, do not seem to
realize that open source or free software can be sold as well. They seem to
confuse FOSS as being *synonymous" with "free as in beer".

And even if "90+% of open source is also non-commercial", that can be just
because many people do not charge for their open source software. There's no
rule that they cannot, though.

~~~
franciscop
I agree, I'd be the first one who would like to get some money for my open
source :)

I am just saying that if there's such a strong correlation it's normal for
some people to mix them up.

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RangerScience
Really good insights on how this is tots fine and works well, but I think it
also misses something key:

As company, you can make money by giving something away for free.

~~~
maxxxxx
It may also be a tool to to push out competition. Keep your own money making
stuff proprietary but make everything else open source so others can't
survive. this seems to be the Google and Facebook strategy.

~~~
detuur
If you make the stuff that powers your way of doing business free, you'll push
out everyone who tries anything different. If your way is rule, you're king.

------
anfilt
Well, it kinda takes more people working part time to do the same amount as
someone working on it full time. Throw in the fact they also probably get
paid. Yes, the will code more the most volunteers. Sadly, volunteers who would
contribute more have to eat too.

Although, I find the statement "all" is a bit misleading. I know of quite a
few projects done by people on the side.

------
AkshatM
While each individual project may have a core group of committers, are they
the same people each time? This conclusion was not clear to me from the
article, though the Hacker News title implies it.

If that is the case, it goes against my experience with open-source. True,
individual projects have core committers who drive the project forward - but
the ecosystem that springs up around a project doesn't typically derive
entirely from this core subset. NPM is likely the best example with 350,000
packages existing on the platform alone with the distribution of developers to
packages being fairly uniform (reference:
[https://github.com/substack/npmtop/blob/master/README.markdo...](https://github.com/substack/npmtop/blob/master/README.markdown)
\- mind that the numbers are from 2011, but even back then it was highly
uniform).

------
maxander
As others have noted, the article is based on a study that only looked at a
small subject of OSS projects, so it's not very solid. But the results fit
with many commenters' perceptions. It's surprising that so little is known
about the dynamics of how OSS gets written, given how crucially important it
is to the global economy these days.

(Even) more broadly; I wonder if a similar system will wind up dominating in
some fields of science. There's been a bunch of cases where prominent research
papers in AI or biomedicine have been published by entirely for-profit
companies; one supposes they benefit in the same fashion that more traditional
software companies benefit from publishing open source work, namely by
building a reputation and cultivating a larger ecosystem around their
expertise.

~~~
dnomad
Not much is known about the reality of open source because people do not want
to know. This is the biggest story of the last decade: a few major technology
corporations have banded together to give away billions of dollars of software
completely for free. It is, I suspect, the greatest act of charity our planet
has ever known. It's not difficult to see how virtually all of the major
trends from the rise of China to the ever expanding proliferation of
smartphones and IoT are being driven by this.

The disconnect between the narrative around technology companies and and the
reality is due to a severe cultural blindspot. It would simply never occur to
most people that private companies would compete to give way most of their
products. Even people who should know better don't want to admit that much of
the software they consume (for absolutely zero dollars!) is provided by the
same companies they love to whine about. We seem to be missing a whole new
phase of capitalism happening right under our noses and there's really not
enough research into it.

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donbright
you know what would be interesting... is if there was some kind of equivalent
for dtrace or strace or gdb.. but instead of collecting statistics on
performance or call trees of functions, it could instead tell you statistics
on who wrote the code that your machine is running, line by line.

~~~
dankohn1
This is by project instead of by machine, but CNCF develops DevStats to show a
number of statistics on each of our projects, including the companies behind
the development.

[https://k8s.devstats.cncf.io/d/9/companies-
table?orgId=1](https://k8s.devstats.cncf.io/d/9/companies-table?orgId=1)

Disclosure: I am executive director of CNCF.

------
starefossen
Keep in mind that many of these corporate employed developers would likely
contribute to the same OSS projects as a part of their job regardless of what
company they happen to be employed at.

~~~
pests
I don't think this is true.

First of all some workplaces won't allow it.

Some companies don't even run on OSS.

Some companies will work on it but not contribute back.

Some companies won't have a budget to fund random / semi-related OSS project
development.

~~~
rossdavidh
There are examples. For instance, both Linux (Linus Torvalds) and Python
(Guido Rossum) have been steered by original contributors who changed
employers several times, always still retaining their role as primary
developer/coordinator for that open source project. Not saying it's the
majority, but Linux and Python are two pretty important examples.

~~~
yayana
Those aren't relevant examples for drawing a conclusion about the relationship
between the average contributor to Linux or python and their employer.. Or for
the lead of an average project and their employer.

~~~
pests
You made this point better than I could. If anything GP mentioning _important
projects_ is by definition the exception.

