Is it just me, or do people seem to think that if they can discredit Al Gore, the climate change discussion will go away?

LWN.net has a fascinating report on who’s contributing code to the Linux kernel. I was most interested in how much of the code is contributed by volunteers and how much was contributed by programmers paid to work on the Linux kernel. Here’s a breakdown:

Either way, the results come out about the same: at least 65% of the code which went into 2.6.20 was created by people working for companies. If the entire “unknown” group turns out to be developers working on a volunteer basis – an unlikely result – then just over 1/3 of the 2.6.20 patch stream was written by volunteers. The real number will be lower, but it still shows that a significant portion of the code we run is written by developers who are donating their time.

I’d love to know how many of the people paid to work on the Linux kernel started out by contributing code as volunteers and were later hired to continue the work they were already doing for free.

Almost 2000 different people contributed patches that were accepted last year. That’s impressive.

Turns out, North Korea may not be enriching uranium after all. Why does this matter? North Korea had a bunch of plutonium that was ready to be turned into nuclear weapons, but it was under lock and key and being monitored by the IAEA thanks to a 1994 agreement. In 2002, President Bush said North Korea had violated that agreement by running a secret uranium enrichment program. The North Koreans kicked out the IAEA monitors and proceeded to turn the plutonium into nuclear weapons, one of which they tested last year. Today we learn that we don’t really know whether North Korea had that uranium program after all. How did we find this out? Intelligence agencies are backing away from administration claims because soon inspectors will be going back into North Korea. Once again, worst President ever.

Update: Read Fred Kaplan for an explanation of just how bad this really is.

Rogers Cadenhead reports on a Wikipedia editor who deliberately lied about his background on his bio page, and then convinced the New Yorker that the lies were the truth. (The magazine wound up having to print a correction.) He then admitted to the lie and was hired by Jimbo Wales at Wikia anyway. When I look at some of the people who run Wikipedia (like its founder), I am more amazed than ever at its success and level of quality.