A study of the Linux kernel evolution

The open source concept is a phenomenon of the past two decades in the computer development world. One of the most important characteristics of this concept is the Linux operating system that was started in the early 90's by Linus Torvalds. The complexity of the code creates a challenging environment requiring highly skilled volunteers.This case study is part of a larger PhD research which deals with the evolution of the open source movement and Linux operating system, that claims to track and examine the kernel source code evolution over more than a decade by reviewing 534 different Linux kernel versions in various parameters such as the growth of source code lines, number of participants, size of the kernel etc. and analyzing the progress of the findings along the time axis. A major part of this research is a study of the Kernel code evolution beginning with the first stable version Furthermore, this study compares the stable kernel versions (140) and the unstable kernel or development versions (394). This reveals an interesting preference to the unstable kernel versions in variety of growth data, such as average additional source code lines, kernel size etc.