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At LinuxCon North America in Toronto in 2016, Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin marked Linux’s 25th anniversary by describing a project that had grown from Linus Torvalds’ 1991 creation into shared infrastructure spanning smartphones, servers, small IoT devices and high-performance computing. His larger point was that Linux’s success demonstrated the power of open collaboration—and that the same model would outlast Linux itself.
What Jim Zemlin said at Linux’s 25th anniversary
Zemlin opened his LinuxCon North America keynote with: “We made it. 25 years. Quite an accomplishment.” He called Linux “the most successful software project in history,” presenting its reach across devices and computing infrastructure as evidence of what a global open-source community could build. These remarks were reported by CIO on August 22, 2016, during Linux’s anniversary year: CIO’s account of the keynote.
Linux began with Linus Torvalds in 1991. By the anniversary coverage, it ran on smartphones, servers and many other kinds of devices. Zemlin’s framing emphasized breadth: Linux was not confined to one type of computer or one industry, but had become a foundation used across a wide range of technology.
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Zemlin argued that organizations could share common software while competing on the products and services they build around it. Instead of every company independently creating and maintaining the same underlying components, a shared project lets participants pool effort and improve software together. Businesses can then differentiate through the value they add for customers.
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He summarized the collaborative advantage this way: “All of us are smarter than any one of us.” In this account, open source was not simply code available for others to use. It was a way to coordinate contributions from individuals and organizations that might otherwise be competitors.
How quickly the Linux kernel changed
CIO reported Zemlin’s figures for the kernel’s average development activity at the time. He said developers added 10,800 lines of code, removed 5,300 and modified 1,800 per day on average, and that Linux changed seven or eight times an hour. These are figures he cited in 2016, not a current measurement or a rate that should be assumed to hold in 2026.
| Activity reported by Zemlin | Average per day |
|---|---|
| Lines added | 10,800 |
| Lines removed | 5,300 |
| Lines modified | 1,800 |
| Reported change cadence | Seven or eight times an hour |
A separate perspective came in a 2017 Linux Foundation interview with Brian Behlendorf, co-founder of the Apache Software Foundation and then Hyperledger executive director. He said the 25-plus-year-old Linux kernel still saw about 5,000 new lines of code per day. The figures come from different speakers and years, so they should not be treated as directly comparable measurements of one fixed development rate. Behlendorf’s broader point was that long-lived projects need a critical mass of maintainers and contributors to keep them healthy: Linux Foundation interview with Brian Behlendorf.
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What Zemlin predicted for open source
Zemlin said Linux’s collaborative model would continue beyond the kernel. “I want to tell all of you that open and sharing is here to stay,” he said, pointing to millions of contributors, billions of lines of code and companies built around shared technologies. Those scale claims belong to his 2016 keynote and should not be read as current counts.
The prediction was less about any one project’s size than about a pattern: people and organizations would keep building shared technologies, while companies formed around their use and the services or products added on top. Linux offered a prominent example, but Zemlin saw open collaboration as a durable way to develop software more broadly.
Why Linux’s longevity is also a governance question
Fast development and broad adoption do not by themselves guarantee that a project will endure. Behlendorf’s sustainability perspective highlights the people and structures behind the code: a project needs enough contributors to do the work and enough maintainers to review, guide and sustain it. Governance, licensing and community culture also affect whether organizations are willing to invest in shared software over time.
The Linux Foundation itself reflects one approach to stewardship. Linux Magazine’s 2017 profile described it as an umbrella for open-source projects beyond Linux and said Zemlin had led it since 2007, after the Open Source Development Labs merged with the Free Standards Group. That is historical context, not confirmation of the Foundation’s current leadership or structure.
What the 25-year milestone shows—and what it does not
Zemlin’s 2016 remarks make the case that Linux’s significance lay in more than its age: it had become widely used across very different kinds of computing, attracted contributions at an exceptional pace and enabled organizations to share foundational software while competing elsewhere. The milestone also illustrates why open-source durability depends on a sustained community, not just code that is publicly available.
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The keynote and accompanying coverage are a snapshot from 2016–2017. They do not establish Linux’s current market share, the kernel’s current development rate, or who leads the Linux Foundation today. Their enduring insight is narrower and clearer: a shared project can become critical infrastructure when broad adoption is matched by ongoing collaboration and stewardship.
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