linux-kernel - Re: How many contributors are we losing

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Message-ID: <20080530204700.GA3807@kroah.com>
Date:	Fri, 30 May 2008 13:47:00 -0700
From:	Greg KH <greg@...ah.com>
To:	"Luck, Tony" <tony.luck@...el.com>
Cc:	Dave Jones <davej@...hat.com>,
	James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@...senpartnership.com>,
	ksummit-2008-discuss@...ts.linux-foundation.org,
	Pekka Enberg <penberg@...helsinki.fi>,
	David Woodhouse <dwmw2@...radead.org>,
	linux-kernel <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: How many contributors are we losing

On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 01:23:44PM -0700, Luck, Tony wrote:
> Greg wrote:
> > I also have "cleaned up" versions of the kernel log files for just the
> > reason you say above.  You would not believe the number of times some
> > people mispell their own name in a single kernel release...  That makes
> > it easier to do this kind of mapping.  The cleaned up logs are in that
> > directory as well.
> 
> I took those cleaned up log files (which run from 2.6.11 to 2.6.22) and
> created some new ones (raw, I didn't try to clean them) for 2.6.23, 2.6.24,
> 2.6.25 and 2.6.26-sofar.  Then I skimmed through looking for drive-by
> contributors (defined as someone who contributes to just one release and
> is then never heard from again).

Well, you do know that the distribution of all of our users are:
	50% only contributed 1 patch
	25% contributed 2
	12% contributed 3
	6% contributed 4
and so on?

Our curve is leveling out much better now though.  For the whole 2.5
release, the top 30 people did over 80% of the work.  Now, the top 30
people are doing 30% of the work.

So it is getting much better, as long as we still continue to keep our
massive rate of change[1] that we have going, and huge number of
developers[2], we should be fine.

So this list doesn't necessarily mean anything is wrong, only that 50%
are one-time contributors.  And I think that shows we are easy to get a
change into our tree from just about anyone, not that we are driving
people away.

thanks,

greg k-h

[1] 7,000 lines added, 2,500 lines removed, 2,400 lines modified, per
day for all of the 2.6.25 release cycle.  That's insane.
[2] 2,598 unique developers from 2.6.20 to 2.6.25
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