Linux Counter Drops 90.000 Users

hta writes "Over the 7 years that the Linux Counter has been operative, a lot of people have registered who can no longer be verified. We do not want to publish false data to the world. So we have to remove the data when it is too old, and have decided to give two grace periods." See below for more information - but go out and get counted!

• Two years for entries with an email that might be valid
• One year for entries without a valid email entry

More technical details are available from the Counter.

Since there has not been any routine for this before, there is a backlog of almost 100.000 entries.
We have decided to pull the whole backlog at once on November 1.
After this date, the aged-out entries will not be included in the Linux Counter user count, and will not receive email notifications from the counter.

If you registered with the Linux Counter long ago, go over there and log in in order to make sure your entry stays counted."

Wouldn't it be better...

[jd]

...if the Linux Counter people ran a mass OS fingerprinting campaign, fingerprinted every reachable machine on the Internet and added in any non-reachable address for which a registrant has given some data.

THEN we might see some real, useful figures.

Well, until the RIAA sued them for infringing their patent on mass-scans. (See earlier article.)

Better tracking idea

[Arethan]

I can't get into the site since it's been slashdotted, but from the sounds of it, the system in place is based on the honor system. You could very easily falsely register yourself as a Linux user, or simply not register at all. What might work a little better is an opensource project to write a piece of software that occasionally contacts a registration server to 'touch' it's record. When you register the machine, you might even want to specify it's use (personal desktop, business desktop, business server, etc). Records that go 'untouched' for over 6 months are considered extinct and are removed.

This would obviously only work for machines that have internet access, but it's still better then having to manually update your entry...

The Counter should go away.

[grytpype]

It may have made sense when the community was small and a there was a reasonable likelihood that the count might be accurate, but now, it just makes no sense. The vast majority of Linux users aren't going to register, so what are you counting? You're just generating an inaccurate, meaningless number.

Counting users

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not simply ask the various Linux companies, i.e., Redhat, Suse, Debian etc., how many sales they have had, this should give a reasonable indication of how many CD's have been shipped either directly to people or to stores.

Its not a particularly scientific way of getting the info, but will yield numbers. More to the point, if numbers can be got for the various versions (i.e., rh6.2 vs rh7.1)..that would be much more interesting to me. I'm interested in who stays on the bleeding edge vs remaining a little behind the curve because of stability, compatibility or whatever reasons