"The actual pattern of that growth is interesting to see. As
shown in Figure 1, the growth curve of the Linux source code has
essentially been linear in nature, with the noted exception of the
development versions of Linux. These are represented by the large
drops in SLOC values, which occurred whenever a new development
series of the Linux kernel (2.1, 2.3, 2.5...) was started.... "To
get a better sense of the linear growth, Figure 2 illustrates the
amount of code in just the production versions of Linux, which are
the even version numbers in the kernel history (1.0, 1.2, 2.0,
etc.)..."