How much would it cost to create a Linux distribution from scratch -- assuming, that is, Linux didn't exist yet? The Linux Foundation crunched some numbers and came up with an answer: around $10.8 billion.

The whole accounting exercise is available in a report released just this morning, "Estimating the Total Development Cost of a Linux Distribution". Their way of computing the $10.8bn figure was to take the Fedora 9 distribution -- kernel, packages, the whole open source enchilada -- and used an open source software cost estimation tool to calculate the cost of paying a conventional proprietary software development team to create all of that.

The exact methodology is all laid out in the paper: how many lines of source code, how many programmers, how many person-years (or "mythical man-months", depending on the depth of your cynicism about such things), and the possible advantages and pitfalls to their analysis. Biggest possible thorn: "The [analysis] model was designed from research on proprietary software development" -- meaning, there might not be a one-to-one correlation between the way software is developed in both proprietary and open spheres.

The numbers don't even have to be the real reason to read this report; for all I know they could be in there just to have something to wave under the nose of the local PHB. The real reasons, to me, are twofold:

1. It shows that open source is not a "hobby" or "toy" undertaking, and in fact hasn't been for some time now. This particular urban myth has probably gasped its last during the course of 2008, and this is yet another coffin nail for it.

2. It shows that open source has a real-world value that can't always be easily condensed to a metric, but it sure helps. Andrew Updegrove put it this way: "One measure of the value of FOSS is not the cost to build it, but rather the avoided cost of not having to do so at all." In other words, why reinvent the wheel when there's several thousand wheels already invented and ready to go -- many of which almost certainly get you where you need to go right now?

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