The Open Source Model Is About Organization, Not Who Signs Your Paycheck

Nick Carr points out a report from the Linux Foundation that finds that most contributions to the Linux kernel come from people who work at companies. Nick Carr says this is a sign of a “shift from the volunteer to the corporate model,” which I think misses the point on a couple of different levels. For starters, most of the people contributing to the kernel are professional programmers, and most professional programmers have jobs in the software industry. So it’s totally unsurprising that most kernel contributors work for software companies.