10/18/2007
Normal business rules apply
Linux is a large scale engineering project financed by profit minded corporations. IBM and Intel, for example, have obtained major returns from extensive and sophisticated investments in Linux. An article on Kernel Trap shows who dominates and steers Linux development and how. Companies that go into Linux under the impression that a “community” of hobbyists exists to do engineering work for free will find themselves in trouble sooner or later. Oddly enough, many companies that spent huge sums on membership fees to industry consortia, have not figured out that Linux and other open source projects are also consortia that operate on similar principles. We’ve been involved in and observing Linux development for a very long time now and it’s possible to play this game for profit, but not without some investment and some awareness.