this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2026
45 points (97.9% liked)
Linux
61136 readers
1063 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I think the OP's analysis might have made a bit of a jump from overall levels of hobbyist maintainers to what percentage of shipping code is maintained by people in their spare time.
While the experiences of OpenSSL and xz should certainly drive us find better ways of funding underlying infrastructure you do see a higher participation rates of paid maintainers where the returns are more obvious. The silicon vendors get involved in the kernel because it's in their underlying interests to do so - and the kernel benefits as a result.
I maintain a couple of hobbyist packages on my spare time but it will never be a funded gig because comparatively fewer people use them compared to DAYJOB's project which can make a difference to companies bottom lines.
Well, hobbyist projects are surely not the only pillar of the open source systems, and big projects like the Linux kernel matter immensely, too. But the article author does not deny that. He makes a point that the hobbyist projects are very important, too. Without them, there would be very little desktop software. I'd guess that much of KDE is hobbyist-powered.
And apart from that, financial support for projects important for infrastructure is a popular talking point. But I don't see that happen much. Where are the SW engineering jobs for maintainers and contributors of real time Linux, messaging middleware, things like Ceph and file systems, FLOSS browsers, conference software, and so on? And now there are calls that the FLOSS community should care for security in infrastructure and industrial applications. If this were serious, one could simply pay the people who already do that (and massively hire more of them).
Your hunch is correct, they are, because the differentiator between open source and walled garden projects is freedom, and freedom will spontaneously generate projects based on an unfulfilled need. A paid market by itself will not.
In my early days of programming (late 80s), I was copying code from books and magazines. Then came windows and mac, and these were far less friendly to devs, and became more and more so.
Most of these tools were born of need and want, not because any infrastructure existed to pay them. Look at the list of apps in frdroid; most are very obviously solving a problem unique to the dev.
And there is one more thing to account for: for all the apps and scripts you see in a public code repo, there are many times more than that living on someone's HDD that will never see the public eye.
The point you've ignored in your article is that this is simply the split free market creates. We've had this issue since the invention of transmissible ideas.