The Linux Foundation published this excellent article:Â Estimating the Total Development Cost of a Linux Distribution
Some very interesting stats :
Linux is the most popular open source operating system today, didn’t you know that already?
Total development cost of a Linux distribution in 2002: $1.2 billion
Cost to build Fedora 9 in 2008: $10.8 billion
Cost of developing the Linux kernel: $1.4 billion
Total: 3200 kernel developers representing 200 companies.
Active for every release: 1,000 kernel developers from over 100 companies.
Linux ecosystem: $25 billion
(which means if you are in the Linux business, you have a huge market already)
Red Hat Linux 7.1 (2002): 30 Million lines of code.
Fedora Linux 9 (2008):Â 204 million lines of code.
How to estimate the cost of development:
| Total Physical Source Lines of Code (SLOC) | 204,500,946 |
| Development Effort Estimate, Person-Years (Person-Months) (Basic COCOMO model, Person-Months = 2.4 * (KSLOC**1.05)) |
59389.53 (712674.36) |
| Schedule Estimate, Years (Months) (Basic COCOMO model, Months = 2.5 * (person-months**0.38)) |
24.64 (295.68) |
| Total Estimated Cost to Develop (average salary = $75,662.08/year, overhead = 2.40). |
$10,784,484,309 |
Hi Prakash,
Just thought this post will be interesting to you…
http://www.techpark.net/2008/12/10/nokia-hints-wider-use-of-linux-in-phones-not-android/