Pablo D

Washington

consultant

Just as Microsoft has trouble tracking the real progress of Linux (how do you count software that never shows up in anyone's financial statements, for example, such as all the copies of Linux built from the original source and not purchased through a distro?), I doubt that anyone has a true handle on the resources that go into Linux. My guess is that by the time you add them all up, they actually exceed the resources that go into Windows. One example: profit margins for Microsoft's Windows division are around 90%, and annual revenues are around $10B, which means that MS actually spends about $1B a year developing Windows. IBM has put $1B a year into Linux. HP says it put $2B into Linux one year. And that doesn't count the hundreds of other people, some of them very highly skilled, who maintain other parts of the system. So picking out only the OSDL is picking out just one of the smaller investments in Linux development.