How open source community functions

[vimalgoyal]

1. I am new to Linux movement and want to understand how Linux and open source community functions.

Whether there is a core team to take decisions about final version of improvements? How that team is selected and co-ordinates with each other.

Whether Linux has its own releases without involvement of any distributor.

2. What is the role of distributors : how do they earn ? Why people buy their release which has a price when it is available for free download.

3. When any distro comes out with a new version which has a price, how it conveys source code to the community.

4. It involves a lot of effort, money and time : who pays for it or people are putting all this for free?

[antidrugue]

1. I am new to Linux movement and want to understand how Linux and open source community functions.

Wikipedia is perhaps the best source of information for those type of questions.

I could be wrong, but here is how I understand it :

Whether there is a core team to take decisions about final version of improvements? How that team is selected and co-ordinates with each other.

There is no fixed team to proper speak of (though there are regular contributors and long time helpers), everyone can make a contribution to the Linux Kernel. Your contribution has to be "signed off" by eatablished developpers or approved by project coordinator Linus Torvalds.

Whether Linux has its own releases without involvement of any distributor.

Linux is simply the kernel, it doesn't include any applications. A distribution is the Linux kernel + related applications (X server, Gnome, GNU core utils, etc.).

2. What is the role of distributors : how do they earn ? Why people buy their release which has a price when it is available for free download.

People mainly pay for professional support from vendors.

3. When any distro comes out with a new version which has a price, how it conveys source code to the community.

This all depends under which license the softwares bundled are. If its GPL, changes to source code as to be made public.

4. It involves a lot of effort, money and time : who pays for it or people are putting all this for free?

Some company, like HP and IBM use Linux on their own machine. If they need to modify Linux to work better for their needs, then they have to make public any changes they make to the kernel. They got Linux for free, so they pay their own developers to customize it for their hardware. It's actually a good business model for them.

[Cabhan]

1) Most projects have a leader (or a group) that runs the project. This leader is generally the one that decides when a new release is ready. If you don't like this leader, you can always fork a project and run the fork yourself.

As for the actual Linux kernel, the ultimate head of this is Linus Torvalds. However, there are a great many kernel developers, and Linus is more of a unifying force than a supreme dictator.

2) What do you mean "distributor"? If you're referring to Red Hat or SuSE (both of whom sell a version of Linux), purchasing Linux from them generally gets you some proprietary software as well as support contracts. But the Linux kernel (and most distributions) are free to acquire, yes.

3) The Linux kernel is open-source: not all Linux software has to be. Even if Linux software is under the GPL (thus FOSS), you are allowed to charge for the software, you just need to give out the source code with it. Source code is generally distributed through packages: for instance, the Gaim sourcecode is available at:

http://gaim.sourceforge.net/downloads.php

4) There are some companies who contribute a great deal to Linux development (IBM, Novell, Red Hat, etc.), but most of Linux development is done by volunteers. It has worked very well, in general.


I hope that answers your questions: let me know if you need clarification.