Gnome Census Results

At GUADEC 2010, Neary Consulting revealed the results of its Gnome Census, a report that studies who contributes to the Gnome project. The study found that some 70 percent of contributors are unpaid, but that the majority of paid commits come from paid participants. Seventy percent of contributors work on the project in their spare time, while an additional 20 percent of contributors do so on both a paid and voluntary basis. The study also looked at commercial developers� contributions to Gnome. In the information collected, Red Hat had the highest percentage of contributions to the project with 16.30 percent. Immediately followed by Novell with 10.44 percent. The study stated that Red Hat�s ranking isn�t much of a surprise, considering the company employs 16 of the top 40 Gnome contributors. Red Hat has been key in developing middleware modules. The report also cautions about the compartmental nature of Gnome development. According to the report, specific companies have carved out areas of Gnome to maintain. From the report: �This compares unfavorably with the Linux kernel, where there are several active maintainers for each subsystem.�

Source of Information :  Linux Magazine No 120.November 2010