Had this thought ever passed you that the OS that’s fuelling all these thousands and millions of servers worldwide would be worth if it’s undertaken as a commercial project? If it’s Open Source does not mean it’s development cost is zero. After all, it’s the fruit of years of community driven development. Two researchers have estimated the cost of replicating Linux kernel from the scratch at about 1.4 billion USD! Who said Open Source is free?
Jesus Garcia and Isabel Alonso from the University of Oviedo have estimated the development cost that would take approximately 1000 top notch developers around 14 years to replicate the giant Linux kernel. The cost estimation was done Constructive Cost Model 81 algorithm and the whole experiment revealed only the estimates and it was not intended for actual use but to give you an idea of how much the development costs have increased especially in the Euro zone in the past 4-5 years.
But the point is that the sheer amount of development costs, the time span and the developers needed is mind boggling. Does this ever cross your mind when you use Linux?
You can read the complete report here
Interesting stuff: