Paid developers write Linux kernel

Most Linux kernel code is written by paid developers at major corporations, reports APC Mag.

Jonathan Corbet, founder of LWN.net and kernel contributor, reveals that 18% of contributions to the kernel were made without a specific corporate affiliation, with an additional 7% that weren't classified. The remainder were from people working for specific companies in roles where developing that code was a major requirement. "75% of the code comes from people paid to do it,” says Corbet.

Within that field, Red Hat leads chart with 12%, followed by Intel with 8%, IBM and Novell with 6% each, and Oracle, with 3%. Despite the commercial rivalry between the companies, central kernel development has worked well, notes Corbet.

The Ptex texture mapping library used in the Disney Pixar film Bolt has been open sourced under a BSD licence, according to Bit-tech.

The application promises full support for reading, writing, caching, and filtering Ptex texture files, bringing the same technology to the open source community.

According to developer Brent Burley, the release of Ptex as a BSD-licensed open source package isn't a one-off event, with Disney expecting to release other open source projects. The company has with plans to introduce a new page dedicated to its open source projects on the official Disney Animation site.

Riversimple's idea to turn open source ethics loose on the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle hasn't exactly set the world on fire since being unveiled last July, writes Autoblog Green.

Still, the project to develop a H2 vehicle with a 6kW fuel cell that would cost just $322 is moving along. The project lead Hugo Spowers, said: “There is such a yawning gap between the environmental performance of cars and what is sustainable, that I don't believe a purely competitive world can ever get us there.

“[Open source] really does produce this constant and very rapid drive toward absolute excellence, which I think is needed in the current circumstances. I have precious little faith in regulation ever pushing us in that direction.”