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David A. Wheeler: New Report Sizes Up Linux

[ Thanks to David A.
Wheeler
for this report: ]

I’ve just released a report on the size of Red Hat Linux
version 6.2’s source code. Interesting results include the
following:

  1. This Linux distribution includes well over 17 million physical
    source lines of code (SLOC).
  2. Over 4,500 person-years of development time would have been
    required to build this distribution by conventional proprietary
    means.
  3. It would have cost over $600 million (in year 2000 dollars) to
    develop this distribution in the U.S. using conventional
    proprietary means.

The largest components (in order) were the linux kernel, the
X-windows server, egcs, and emacs. The languages with the most
lines of code were (in order): C, C++, LISP, shell, and perl; many
other languages were also represented.

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