As I've noted before, there is more to open-source development than lines of code written, important though that activity is. There is, for example, the critical work done by Canonical, the company behind the ubiquitous Ubuntu Linux distribution, which tends to involve more ease-of-use development than core kernel development.
Canonical CEO and Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth highlights this "secondary" development in an Ubuntu Open Week interview, reported by Ars Technica. Arguing that "Ubuntu and Canonical are making a very big difference in free software, and that has little to do with how many patches in the kernel have an @canonical.com e-mail address associated with them," Shuttleworth points out two key areas in which his Canonical team is improving the Linux experience:
http://www.linuxlinks.com/portal/news/article.php?story=20081110141136716