this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2025

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The Linux Kernel Hit A Decade Low In 2024 For The Number Of New Commits Per Year (www.phoronix.com)

submitted 3 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago

I said it elsewhere and I'll say it here again, get rid of the damn mailing lists, and embrace rust + it's tooling. The Linux kernel dev experience is horrendous. Go tell a freshly minted github user how to contribute to the kernel using a mailing list and see the interest vanish. Tell a budding kernel developer to follow a 10 minute article on how to build the kernel and another 10 minute article on how to test it. I'm sure that'll keep the majority willing to contribute.

The kernel needs new blood, but it won't get that many if maintainers hang on to development practices and tools from the last century.

P.s I'm grateful for maintainers and contributors, but help us help you.

Anti Commercial-AI license

[–] [email protected] 36 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

Because "number of commits" is such a relevant metric (for reference 85% of the commits resulted in 110% of added lines compared to 2023).

Are people too lazy to talk about actual features and stuff added, so they compare some arbitrary number because that's a stat easily pulled from the data?

PS: Nice to see the comments talking about "woke" developers... Guess the culture war brain rot really spreads everywhere 🤮

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

This is from the article:

But the commit count is just one metric and this year saw 3,694,098 new lines of code and 1,490,601 lines of code removed. That's comparable to prior years with last year seeing 3.3 million new lines and 1.59 million lines removed... Down from the 5.3 million new lines in 2022 but for 2021 was also in the 3.2 million new line range. So in terms of code activity, 2024 was largely similar to prior years for the Linux kernel, just with far fewer commits.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Yes, I read the article (that's were my "number of lines" come from...). But does including this in the article make a shitty article any better?

It's basically "Linux kernel hits record low" (also the title) followed by "but by other metrics it looks different" and then... nothing. No actual analysis, no context. Just randomly presenting numbers (and even admitting their headline metric isn't worth much) and pretending that's an article.

That's stupidly lazy...

[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 days ago

Starting a conversation with Statistics has long been a sign being too lazy to make a mechanism to include in the Hypothesis. It has extended to, giving the stats and making the theory without caring about adding a mechanism to the hypothesis.
That is what leads to "stats is evil".

Because, on top of the number of lines, it will also matter what kind of code is there in the line.
One can easily fill a 100 lines of code, hardcoding a lookup table with minimal logic in it. At the same time, a few lines of changed code might make a big difference. Then, if multiple significant changes are done to a single feature, they all might be given in a single commit, making the number of commits very low, while having the changes spread across several different features, might require separate commits, increasing the count.

I'll take these stats as a fun little number, usable to make some good looking graphs, but that's all.

[–] s38b35M5 2 points 3 days ago

tldr

[+] [email protected] -8 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

the narrative shaping in american media is so disgusting; they won't even question whether or not my government's expanded export controls in kicking out some of its most prolific contributors simply because they're russian is a factor and cover it up by counting the number of lines added.

what happens next year or the year after that? are the same contributors expect to keep working at the same scale they're doing now? the youngest ones are in their 40's and paid exorbitantly well; what happens when they retire? do we all just switch to bsd?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Nobody was kicked out for simply being Russian. People were kicked out because they work for sanctioned organizations.

[+] [email protected] -7 points 2 days ago (2 children)

The whole point of open source was that you can see the code and the commits. We don't need to trust anybody. I feel like banning contributors is just contradicting one of the key benefits of open source.

Wouldn't it be the right thing to just improve the security and vetting of commits to the kernel? After all, it's the Linux Kernel.

Besides, the idea that employed developers with a Russian day job are a risk... but one fails to consider these were the honest ones who declared their day job. Does the threat modelling end there?

What would you do about people who... lie online about where they work? (I know it's impossible but bear with me).

I feel like properly vetting commits to the kernel that does not involve the core contributors and maintainers too much is the way to go. (Tests, dedicated resources, more time in review, commit to a staging branch and ask the world's foremost hackers to find vulnerabilities, etc)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

We don’t need to trust anybody.

Reviewing every change and discovering every issue is unfeasible on multiple levels. Even skipping that fundamental, base level requirement; you need to trust in trustworthiness from submitters and reviewers, and that people review. You need to trust those maintainers that can push and pull and merge. You need to trust the builders and publishers and distributors.

I doubt you're reviewing every code change and compiling or verifying reproducible builds on every software and patch version you run. You put trust in the chain. And the chain decided to cut at some point because of risk.

Besides, the idea that employed developers with a Russian day job are a risk… but one fails to consider these were the honest ones who declared their day job.

So you think people do only one job and have only one concern? Do you think people of sanctioned countries, contributing to an unjust war, more or less directly, are a bad place to start reducing risks?

I feel like properly vetting commits to the kernel that does not involve the core contributors and maintainers too much is the way to go.

I'm baffled you can make this point while at the same time not accepting their decision after review, assessment, and consequence. You're asking them to review while not accepting their decision. From the same people.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The whole point of open source was that you can see the code and the commits. We don’t need to trust anybody. I feel like banning contributors is just contradicting one of the key benefits of open source.

You are misunderstanding why the sanctions happened. It has nothing to do with whether or not the individuals working at those entities are trustworthy or not.

The Linux Foundation is an institute of the United States. The United States has demanded that entities within their jurisdiction, like the Linux Foundation, follow sanctions, and cut contact and interaction with sanctioned entities.

Because the Linux Foundation doesn't want to be punished or pay fines, they follow those sanctions. Nothing to do with trusting the individual contributors or corporations.

What would you do about people who… lie online about where they work?

This is probably what happened. The contributors went home, to their personal emails, and the world kept spinning and no one looked twice.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago

Source: https://lwn.net/ml/all/CAHk-=whNGNVnYHHSXUAsWds_MoZ-iEgRMQMxZZ0z-jY4uHT+Gg@mail.gmail.com/

Ok, lots of Russian trolls out and about. It's entirely clear why the change was done, it's not getting reverted, and using multiple random anonymous accounts to try to "grass root" it by Russian troll factories isn't going to change anything. And FYI for the actual innocent bystanders who aren't troll farm accounts - the "various compliance requirements" are not just a US thing. If you haven't heard of Russian sanctions yet, you should try to read the news some day. And by "news", I don't mean Russian state-sponsored spam. As to sending me a revert patch - please use whatever mush you call brains. I'm Finnish. Did you think I'd be supporting Russian aggression? Apparently it's not just lack of real news, it's lack of history knowledge too. Linus