Linux Foundation spends just 3.4% of its money on Linux

Turbocapitalist · 12-18-2021, 06:35 AM

Bryan Lunduke went through the document which the Linux Foundation has tried to pass off as a financial report and noticed that the Linux Foundation spends just 3.4% of its money on Linux. So 96.6% is a mixture of overhead and wasteful activities, mostly the latter. However apparently no details were given about either, no details at all and Bryan does not link to the report. However, he's been accurate enough in the past so it is likely he is spot on with this.

If a larger percentage of that $177 million USD budget went to actual Linux, a lot of old code could be removed or refactored, in addition to a lot of other improvements. A mentioned, the Linux Foundation exists to represent its members' interests within the kernel. The warning was not heeded when the community representation was eliminated. It's not too late for Linus to do what he did with the OSDL and take his trademarks and walk, but it might be too late soon.

HappyTux · 12-18-2021, 08:12 AM

I am totally shocked, the parasite Corporations and their lackeys they install being parasites, who would every have thought it....

ondoho · 12-18-2021, 09:50 AM

Title should read
"Linux Foundation spends just 3.4% of its money on Linux kernel support"
If I add to that all the other points labeled "Community something" I get to roughly one third.
Isn't that kinda normal for this sort of foundations - they're mostly self-supporting?

boughtonp · 12-18-2021, 10:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Turbocapitalist

Bryan Lunduke went through the document which the Linux Foundation has tried to pass off as a financial report

It's an annual report, which is basically marketing to shareholders, no? Is there somewhere the Linux Foundation specifically referred to it as a financial report?

As ondoho notes, the 3.4% (~6 million USD) is referring to the kernel alone, whilst page 24 of the report refers to "Over 750 Open Source Project Communities" now being supported by the Linux Foundation.

I'm sure there's plenty of fluff/folly projects in that count, and it would certainly be nice to see a comprehensive list of the projects*, but referring to the entire non-Kernel budget as wasteful seems disingenuous.

*(may be available; I haven't looked yet and need to go eat now)

boughtonp · 12-18-2021, 01:04 PM

Ok, so the projects are available at https://www.linuxfoundation.org/projects/ but it's not a good list - just logos and titles linked to a URL - and to get them all requires pressing "view more" a number of times.

After doing that, I ran the the following to produce the attached text file.

Code:

var projects = [];
document.querySelectorAll('#listData .project-card a').forEach
	(function(elem){
		var title = elem.querySelector('span').innerText;
		var url = elem.attributes.href.value;
		projects.push(title+'\t'+url);
	})
console.log(projects.join('\n'));

There are 601 projects in the resulting list, which is not "over 750" as the report claimed, and there are many duplicates entries - the real count may be closer to 500. (GraphQL appears as nine distinct rows).

I have only quickly scanned the list, but one jumped out at me: Why is Google's AMP being supported by the Linux Foundation!?

How is that in any way related to even the broadest definition of "Linux"?

ondoho · 12-24-2021, 02:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by boughtonp

I have only quickly scanned the list, but one jumped out at me: Why is Google's AMP being supported by the Linux Foundation!?

I bet there's more less obvious but equally inappropriate projects in there.
To most of us it's probably old news that the Linux foundation is not primarily about supporting actual Linux (kernel or OS), but about making sure that projects that depend on it continue to strive.

He's not wrong pointing this out, but I just hate Lunduke's sensationalist hyperbole. Always did.

sundialsvcs · 12-30-2021, 10:25 AM

Yes you should keep a careful watch on any Foundation that you choose to contribute to. But I think that it’s misleading to isolate what they are spending on the kernel, which is arguably the smallest part of the system. Linux as we refer to it is a very vast system of software components which “run under” the auspices of the kernel … and which might also run under other environments. Windows, MacOS (Mach), even mainframes and mobiles. The kernel is a very small thing that doesn’t change much.