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From: cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: AI Is Killing Some Legacy Hardware Support
Date: Fri, 1 May 2026 22:55:23 -0000 (UTC)
Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC
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In article <69f4cad6$0$28060$426a74cc@news.free.fr>,
Stéphane CARPENTIER  <sc@fiat-linux.fr> wrote:
>Le 01-05-2026, Dan Cross <cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net> a écrit :
>> In article <69f4705e$0$11451$426a74cc@news.free.fr>,
>> Stéphane CARPENTIER  <sc@fiat-linux.fr> wrote:
>>>Le 29-04-2026, Rich <rich@example.invalid> a écrit :
>>>> I suspect this may reveal how many (most?) kernel maintainers are now 
>>>> corporate employees rather than volunteers,
>>>
>>>Not so long ago I read that at least 80% of kernel contributors were
>>>paid by societies.
>>
>> I assume you meant companies, or corporations, or something like
>> that instead of "societies." 
>
>Yes, you are right, sorry about that.
>
>> At any rate, I suspect that that number is low.
>
>There's a difference between the number of contributors and the number
>of contributions. A full time paid developer can contribute way more than a
>developer contributing on his spare time. There was a Linux contributor
>who only renamed the README.txt in README.md for example. If the biggest
>contributors are, of course, mostly paid developers, there can still be
>thousands of little contributors sending few patches on their spare
>time.

Sure, but does it matter?  The long tail is indeed long, but I
interpreted your comment as saying that at least 80% of active
developers _now_ are getting paid to work on Linux, or at a
minimum doing so in the service of their employers.  I wouldn't
lump the random one-off's as active contributors, particularly
if they did something once a decade or more ago and haven't
since.

>Really, I don't know. Maybe that number is low, but I'm not sure it's
>that low. And I have nothing else to estimate.

My susupicion is that that in terms of people actively working
on the Linux kernel, doing so as part of a paid gig is closer to
95-98%.

	- Dan C.