The Linux Foundation has published the results of a study that the organization conducted in order to compute the approximate financial value of the Linux platform. Based on the results of the study, the Linux Foundation has concluded that it would cost $1.4 billion to develop the Linux kernel from scratch and $10.8 billion to develop the complete platform stack.

The Linux Foundation's study is based on methodology devised by David Wheeler for a similar project in 2002. Wheeler developed a tool that uses the Constructive Cost Model (COCOMO) to extrapolate the value of software from the number of lines of code, the average salary of software developers, and an assortment of other factors. When Wheeler used this tool on the source code of the entire Fedora package archive six years ago, he computed the value of the platform at $1.2 billion.

The volume of code and number of packages has grown enormously since then. The Linux Foundation used the same approach for their new study and determined that the present value of the source code in the Fedora archives has grown to $10.8 billion.

Counting the lines of code is obviously a very unscientific way to compute value, and the numbers shouldn't be viewed as anything other than a ballpark estimate. But it's still moderately instructive—especially when viewed alongside Wheeler's historical results. The methodology has a bunch of very obvious limitations that the Linux Foundation has documented for the sake of clarity.

They note that the Fedora package archives include a lot of components that aren't necessarily found in other distributions and that some distributions have many more packages. There is enormous variance in the pieces that are included in Linux installations used in different contexts, like desktop and server systems. Another serious limitation in this method is that it fails to account for all of the significant effort and developer time that was invested to reduce bloat and decrease the size of the code base.

The paper published by the Linux Foundation includes some other statistical data, too. For example, it says that rewriting the 204 million lines of code that are included in Fedora 9 would require 60,000 person-years of development time. Incidentally, the report reveals the components of the platform that have the highest volume of source code. The Linux kernel tops the list with 5,961,705, and the top ten includes the GNU Compiler Collection, the OpenOffice.org productivity suite, the Eclipse IDE, the Mono .NET runtime, and the Firefox web browser.

Although the dubious methodology falls short of providing an authoritative answer to the question of Linux's value, the paper's big takeaway message still comes through loud and clear. The Linux ecosystem includes an enormous amount of code that represents a significant investment in developer effort. Companies can get a lot of value by using and participating in the advancement of a shared code base.

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