PureGin.org

I found this interesting article about the Linux kernel developer community and the changes that are afoot there with a community that is growing in size and complexity. Read beyond the sensational headline for some thought-provoking interviews with some of the top Linux kernel developers.

According to the article, the most active 30 developers authored only 30% of the changes, while two years ago the top 20 developers did 80% of the changes. One result of this is that new code makes it into the kernel much more quickly than a few years ago - in a six months time frame, rather than 2 to 3 years.

This trend seems to be similar to what is happening in the Drupal community.

"Kernel release 2.6.11 of March 2005 had 475 developers, and the upcoming 2.6.22 release this month has 920 developers". The number of kernel commits has doubled in that time period from 2 per hour to 4 per hour on average.

One of the main differences between Linux and Drupal is that only 3.9% of kernel changes are by 'amateurs', i.e., people who are not Linux Developers in their day jobs. I suspect that this ratio is higher for Drupal.

However, this statistic points to an interesting trend. Basically, companies which wish to influence the development of the Linux Kernel need to contribute significant resources to make sure that their changes are implemented. I foresee that as Drupal becomes a significant platform for enterprise sites, we will see much more 'organizational' involvement.

My message to organizations for whom Drupal is a key technology component: budget development resources to get engaged, learn how to participate effectively in the community process, and be prepared to contribute not just to specific bits, but to the whole project.

Some thoughts regarding the community process itself: this article points to the advantages of keeping statistics about participation, as well as visibility about affiliations of individual participants. I would love to see conversations starting up about the role of enterprise participants in the Drupal ecosystem.