More Than a Gigabuck: Estimating GNU/Linux's Size (2001)
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- It would cost over $1 billion to develop Red Hat Linux 7.1 using proprietary methods in the U.S.
- Red Hat Linux 7.1 contains over 30 million physical source lines of code (SLOC), requiring about 8,000 person-years of development.
- This represents a 60% increase in size, effort, and cost over Red Hat Linux 6.2 (released one year earlier).
- The largest components are the Linux kernel, Mozilla, X-Windows, gcc, gdb, binutils, emacs, LAPACK, Gimp, and MySQL.
- The predominant programming language is C (71%), followed by C++ (15%), with languages like Lisp, Perl, and Python also present.
- The GNU GPL is the dominant license, covering over half of the code; copyleft licenses (GPL and LGPL) account for 63% of the code.
- Open source/free software allows users to modify, analyze, and redistribute code, fostering reliability and vendor independence.
- Linux has shown high reliability in experiments, with lower failure rates than proprietary Unix systems.
- The paper updates previous estimates and provides detailed methodology for SLOC counting and cost estimation using COCOMO.