
Linux kernel worth €1 billion - dreemteem
http://www.computerworlduk.com/toolbox/open-source/kernel-systems/news/index.cfm?newsid=19032
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btilly
And again cost and value get confused.

You'd think that in a world full of businesses who survive on getting people
to pay part of the difference between cost of production and value to the
customer that there might be a general understanding that they are not the
same thing. But no.

What makes it particularly egregious in this case is that whoever wrote the
headline ignored the fact that the article itself is clear on the difference
between cost and value, and that value was not estimated here.

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sparky
This seems like as good an opportunity as any to start a discussion: what do
people think about these software cost estimation models and tools? They seem
like a valuable tool for communicating the value of working software to non-
technical businesspeople, but any programmer knows that the value, complexity,
or cost to reproduce software is a function of much more than SLOC count.

For instance, the SLOCCount tools use the COCOMO model
(<http://www.dwheeler.com/sloccount/sloccount.html#cocomo>), whose follow-on
COCOMO II is discussed here
(<http://csse.usc.edu/csse/research/COCOMOII/cocomo_main.html>). These models
use factors like the following to calculate an exponent which is applied to
the SLOC count to estimate cost to produce:

Required software reliability Database size Product complexity Execution time
constraint Main storage constraint Virtual machine (HW and OS) volatility
Computer turnaround time Analyst capability Applications experience Programmer
capability Virtual machine experience Programming language experience Use of
"modern" programming practices (e.g. structured programming) Use of software
tools Required development schedule

Are these the right factors? How are they suited to estimating the cost to
produce or reproduce a piece of software? What would you add?

It seems like some measure of the cyclomatic complexity of a codebase, or the
number of syntactic elements, might add some information to the raw SLOC
count. Arguably this doesn't tell you much about how much it might cost
somebody to reimplement it (since that person might come up with an easier-to-
code-and-maintain variant with lower cyclomatic complexity or in a more
powerful language), but it might help estimate the cost to get it working in
the first place.

~~~
btilly
_Software Estimation_ by Steve McConnell (who is pretty much always worth
listening to) makes the point that models with many tweakable factors like
COCOMO II are not good for estimating costs because people have a strong
tendency to start with a number they want to find then tweak the factors to
get there. However the research that went into discovering the relative costs
in the model has uncovered a lot of data that is worth listening to.

And, of course, if you want to estimate costs and schedules for your software
then I highly recommend reading _Software Estimation_. It offers a lot of good
advice for people who seriously want to come up with somewhat less ineffective
estimates.

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st3fan
But I just downloaded it for free. I do not understand!? :-)

~~~
almost
Auction it on eBay! You'll be rich!! :p

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dustingetz
FTA: "the thought experiment is not intended to determine the actual value of
the software, but to give policymakers a greater appreciation of the potential
benefits of community-based collaboration"

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vital101
The wonderful thing is that if a price tag was placed on the Linux Kernel, it
would become worthless. Being free (monetarily and in philosophy) is what
makes it so valuable.

~~~
Retric
If the licensing costs of the Kernel were 1 cent I don't think many users
would switch to another system. You might see a significant drop in the
embedded systems market, but only because there are other systems of similar
value floating out there.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Even at 1c everyone would switch.

They'd all switch to an identical Linux fork though, which I think was part of
the original point being made.

~~~
Retric
Your missing the point, if every Linux Kernel cost 1cent due to patent issues
many people would still use it. The option to switch to a "free" BSD Kernel
would cause many people to use that for new systems. However, the value of a
Kernel is increased by the other systems that connect to it. So if you had 10k
systems and you could keep using them with zero transition costs for 100$ most
company's would do so. The fact the Kernel cost's nothing does not mean it's
value is zero.

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t3rcio
Despite all, can we get it free? That is the motive because is so important
that the user make your donations.

