Re: Gnome community

[Juha Siltala <juha siltala net>]

On Thu, 2005-01-27 at 21:48 +0100, Toady wrote:
> On Thu, 2005-01-27 at 19:42 +0200, Juha Siltala wrote:
> > Hi Toady,
> >
> > Once I got an assignment, "count the Linux kernel developers". The
> > biggest problem with that was "what is contribution"? original code? A
> > bugfix? A bug report? A simple usability complaint? No-one knows. BTW, I
> > did do that job, but needed to document my methods very carefully so
> > that people know what I'm doing.
>
> I think it's simpler than this, we just want to see how many people are
> behind gnome in any way to get a picture.
> However if such a document is available, that might help :)
>
> By the way, I'm curious : how many people are counted as linux kernel
> developers ?

The method I chose was to compare the credited hackers in the CREDITS
file to the number of individual posters on the linux developers mailing
list, and see how many of them were active at any given time during the
10 year (or so) period I had data on. With this method I concluded there
are less than 100 active Linux developers at a time. Don't knock it,
it's just how I did it. :) I have a poor excuse of a report over at
http://siltala.net/floss (under the "Kernel hacking" subtopic).

-- 
Juha Siltala
http://www.edu.helsinki.fi/activity/people/jsiltala/