Fedora Metrics Help Whole Linux Community 132
lisah writes "When Fedora released Fedora Core 6 late last year, the team decided to track the number of users with unique IP addresses who connected to yum in search of updates for a new installation of FC6. According to the data they collected, FC6 crossed the one-million user mark in just 74 days. Fedora Project Leader Max Spevack says that while it's great to use metrics to better understand what users want, the real value lies in its ability to encourage hardware vendors to more offer more Linux-oriented goods and services. Spevack told Linux.com: '[W]e always say we wish hardware vendors had more [Linux-capable] drivers. Well, if you can go to them and say, "Hey, there's millions of people using this," then maybe they will listen. In the real world, you need data to prove your case. Well, here it is.'" Linux.com and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.
But.... (Score:5, Funny)
No (Score:5, Insightful)
Collecting data in an opt-in manner like http://counter.li.org/ [li.org] to do statistic. ISN'T EITHER
Collecting data, that don't necessary need to be collected for technical reason (IP address vs. Pentium serial number), without telling it the user first, without asking permission to the user first, THAT IS EVIL (and regularly done by microsoft and other object of hatred from the
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Except collecting the IP addresses then using them for marketing purposes is not necessary
Using IP addresses for marketing? (Score:4, Insightful)
How are they using the IP address for marketing purposes? They're using the number of IP addresses. No one can take the information they've released and determine that a computer at x.x.x.x is running Fedora. (And the information they have, they would have had anyway -- just like Slashdot knows the IP address you posted from.) As the GP said, it's no different from a website processing its server logs and reporting that it had X unique visitors during period Y.
Come to think of it, since yum fetches data over HTTP, it is a website processing its server logs and reporting the number of unique visitors.
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Even if it were MS, it wouldn't be evil. (Score:4, Insightful)
There's nothing wrong with saying "x people accessed Windows Update this [year|month|day]." That's no different from the hit counters that used to exist on every web site. (And which were tacky, and I thank God that people finally realized this.)
What would be evil, and the temptation they need to avoid, is to take their server logs and start mining them for data that can be sold or used for malicious purposes; i.e. personally identifying information about what users are using what versions of Windows, or even how often they're updating, etc.
Aggregate information about hits is something that HTTP servers and their operators do all the time. Where it gets evil is when you have cookies tracking particular users across multiple sites, etc.
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We won't do that. I have no interest in selling data about individual Fedora users. All I care about is figuring out how many people are using the software that so many folks work so hard to produce.
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Anyone who knows a thing or two about computers knows that HTTP servers typically log IP addresses and other information that isn't directly personally identifiable. However, since the average user may not know that yum uses HTTP, or that HTTP servers typically log IP addresses, or that there is such a thing as HTTP, you may have a point.
I don't know if yum informs the user about the logging in any way, but it might be a good idea to do so, if only to be completely clear legally. There's quite clearly
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This is no more 'evil' than the management of Dolphin Stadium in Miami counting the number of people who pass through the turnstiles and publishing that number to show how many people came to Miami to watch the Super Bowl.
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On a somewhat related tack: there's a massive increase in the number of employment opportunities for database techs with security clearances. I hope most people here can snap Legos together.
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Got a specific concern?
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Are the entire databases of collected information publicly available to the people who were responsible for creating the data to collect?
Or is that restricted, priveleged information? I'm not trying to pass judgement on what is "good" or what is "bad" data. I'm only pointing out that when data is collected, en masse, and only certain groups of people are allowed access to it, then those people will tend to make use of their priveleged d
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My take on this sort of thing is that whoever is hosting the servers should be free to collect whatever sort of stats they might want to collect. If you have a problem with that then use someone else's servers.
Servers, bandwidth, and the admins to make everything run just don't drop out of the sky.
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Such a greedy, "mine mine mine!" point of view. There would be no internet if it weren't for the people who use the servers.
> to make everything run just don't drop out of the sky
This was a question of ethics; not finances.
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If you enter my building I'm within my right to use CCTV cameras to
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Regardless, the GPL is not in the spirit you describe; BSD and MIT licences are more aligned to that. The GPL is far more restrictive.
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Only if you call the process "activation" instead of "metrics".
That's why (Score:1)
-Thus began the age of darkness-
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Re:But.... (Score:5, Informative)
As the "Fedora Project Leader", the Fedora buck stops with me, so to speak.
And I promise you that I will NEVER require anyone to "register" Fedora in order to download updates, or stuff like that.
Neither I, nor the Fedora Board, which is Fedora's governing body, will allow some sort of "required registration" in order to get the full Fedora experience.
Download. Install. Update. If that's the extent of a person's interaction with Fedora, fine by me. We hope, of course, that there will be a fourth step, that being: Contribute
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I thank you and your team for their efforts. FC is a great product.
PS. Don't mind them.
1,000,001 I can't switch but would like to (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:1,000,001 I can't switch but would like to (Score:5, Informative)
FC3 uses kernel 2.6.9
FC6 uses kernel 2.6.18
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Re:1,000,001 I can't switch but would like to (Score:5, Informative)
"so I'm too afraid to switch from Core 3 to 6."
If you upgrade that rarely, I'd suggest you take a look at CentOS. CentOS 4 will be a far smaller leap (RHEL4 is close to FC3/FC4), and you'd be on a maintained platform again.
NAT is even more significant. (Score:2)
That doesn't mean the metric is worthles
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"We believe it is reasonable to equate a "new IP address checking in" with "a new installation of FC6", with the following caveats:
1. Users who have dynamic IP addresses will likely be counted multiple times, which inflates the number by some amount.
2. Users who are behind NAT, corporate proxies, or who rsync updates to a local mirror before updating will not be counted at all.
The anecdotal evidence that we receive from different groups, companies, and organizations makes it quite clea
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Or if he waited that long, why not wait for CentOS 5 (based on FC6), which is due out 2-3 months after RHEL5, which is due out before the end of February.
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Oldest system I do this with a 486DX2 50Mhz with 32 Meg ram and there's never a probl
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Saddly... (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe counting how many different IPs downloaded *1* given critical update will be more precise (based on the assumption that even users with non permanent IP will download the patch once to secure their machines, and then won't download it again).
But even if it lacks precision, it is still a good indicator that Linux *IS* in fact popular and much more widespread than people think.
It just lacks sales figures to prove it.
Specially when compared to the so-many "Vista didn't get a warm welcome" reports we read a lot those days.
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You misplaced the invisible parenthesis: "all (users who have broadband connections with IP changing...)"
"with" must refer to "connections" and cannot refer to "users' in that sentence.
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Comcast users usually don't see an IP change unless they powercycle their modem and restart their computer or router. When I was on ATTBI, my IP remained the same until we switched to Comcast's IP block.
Some DSL users constantly gain a new IP when their IP lease is up. It's unfortunate that DSL has gone this route as it used to be a guaranteed static IP.
But in general, this "statistic" means absolutely squat.
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Well, I have Comcast cable and neither rebooting, nor powercycling the cable modem will get a new IP address. I think it is tied to the computer's MAC address. When we moved house, I got a new Cable account, a new cable modem and even then, I still got the same IP address at my new house (I think it was sti
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You lease is tied to both MAC addresses but it will expire over time. If no one else is in line to nab the IP you are using when your lease expires and you restart/powercycle, you'll regai
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The value of these numbers is not solely determined by the degree to which the above statement is true, IMHO.
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The point is that if you can go to ATI or Netgear and say 'you are going to loose X million sales if you don't develop a Linux driver', then ATI & Netgear will pay more attention than if you go to them & say 'we want drivers for Linux'. It's about numbers. When Marketdr
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Re:Saddly... (Score:5, Informative)
"Accuracy of metrics
We believe it is reasonable to equate a "new IP address checking in" with "a new installation of FC6", with the following caveats:
1. Users who have dynamic IP addresses will likely be counted multiple times, which inflates the number by some amount.
2. Users who are behind NAT, corporate proxies, or who rsync updates to a local mirror before updating will not be counted at all.
The anecdotal evidence that we receive from different groups, companies, and organizations makes it quite clear that group (2) is significantly larger than group (1). As such, we believe that the true numbers in the field are higher than the numbers on this page."
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If you count the IP during installation, you are most likely to complete that installation using the same IP. Then the next time sombody installs using that IP it will not be counted as new. So both dynamic IP and people behind NAT might actually give a lower estimate, than the actual value.
Happily (Score:2)
rsync the repo (Score:2)
Hey, probably time to setup your own yum repo then - the mirror should adjust your stats back to normal.
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Not to dispute their research, but its at least interesting to think about this:
the group 2 you referred to won't be counted; that is the total number counted was less the group 2 users, exactly.
The group 1 you referred to were counted more than once (note that this is different than twice). They could have been counted 5 times each; that is the total number was greater than the group 1 users times 5.
Thus, the group 2 users would have to be significantly larger indeed.
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This is wrong (Score:2)
Huh? Anecdotal evidence [wikipedia.org] doesn't make anything "quite clear". Nor does it give you anything to base "true numbers" on. If you want a believable view of how big group 2 is (because you can't count them) then you need to commission a survey that g
Read the summary, at least (Score:2, Insightful)
It's how any new systems are being checked for the first time, and most people probably aren't reinstalling it constantly and downloading updates, so there's very little attacking you could do to these figures.
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What about users with networks in hidden networks. I have 3 Linux boxes on a static DSL in a hidden network. My 3 machines will be counted as 1...
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Even then it'll only give a number of downloads, which differs from number of people and number of installs. Some people have a number of i
yum-updatesd broken (Score:2)
It might be much more popular than they think since yum-updatesd is broken in FC6 [redhat.com].
Commercial support (Score:2)
Also, in these times of big companies patenting everything the source could reveal infringement.
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Distinct, not "unique" (Score:5, Insightful)
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Nah, he meant uniq.
People != Computers (Score:3, Insightful)
Not saying there isn't a vast number of Linux users (I'm sure there are well over a million individual Linux users - that's a third of 1% of just the American population), just that numbers from data like this can be skewed.
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However, that's not how they're collecting the data:
While you need only one CD to do multiple installs, it is my understanding that each machine has to run YUM itself. They've also thought of what you mentioned.
Now, the
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SPICE [berkeley.edu] itself (without the p) is originally a unix program IIRC. Could he use that?
Impossible to install without connecting (Score:5, Informative)
The Add/Remove gui (and yum) crashes if DNS isn't available. After some research, I was able to hack the yum
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Unfortunately the repodata provided on the CD & DVD is not useable by yum but creating a local yum repository [city-fan.org] is quite easy once you know how.
Installing packages from the original media is great just after you've loaded the system, but remember the good old days when you would be given the a prompt like: to complete this change you need to insert disk 3 of the installation media. Good luck finding the original disks a year or two after installing the PC.
I believe the majority people are happy that y
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Re:Impossible to install without connecting (Score:5, Informative)
Regards,
Steve
Huh? (Score:3, Informative)
- I remember that "install" at some point gave me an option to install against latest package in the "yum" repositories, which I do not do for speed.
- I remember the "upgrade" and "install" screens from Anaconda being different. The "upgrade" never asked me to up
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Sweet (Score:2)
"1) Users who have dynamic IP addresses will likely be counted multiple times, which inflates the number by some amount."
To counteract this once you hit the 6 month mark you simply delete IPs that haven't been used in 1-2 months, by doing that you pratically guarante that whatever number you have is an underestimate and that number becomes a lot more authoritative.
Still it's awesome to see the numbers for Fedora are that high considering the dissa
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Re:Sweet (Score:5, Funny)
Welcome to Fedoraland!
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For starters because Luxembourg won't let you move in and get citizenship all that easily.
And the population is rich enough to enforce their will: Pretty much every adult is an officer of several international corporations, at some serious pay each. This is because Luxembourg's laws make it advantageous to headquarter there, but require at least one citizen as a major officer.
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For starters because Luxembourg won't let you move in and get citizenship all that easily.
And the population is rich enough to enforce their will: Pretty much every adult is an officer of several international corporations, at some serious pay each. This is because Luxembourg's laws make it advantageous to headquarter there, but require at least one citizen as a major officer.
Besides: Taking over by settling creates serious (sometimes deadly) opposition from those already there who FORMERLY ran their own government.
If you want to create a settlement where you can run your own government up to a significant level, try Oregon. If they remain true to their history, once you've established a significant colony of like-minded people, if you have a beef with the rest of your county they'll split it and give you your own county composed of you and your like-minded settlers. Then you can elect your own supervisors and sheriff, tax each other, maintain the roads your way, etc.
(Which is what makes the Ragneeshi's attempted takeover of Wasco county - by food-poisoning a salad bar at a local restaurant shortly before the election - such a stupid move: The state had already offered them a county composed of their own settlement and the roads to it.)
-1 Buzzkill
Re:Sweet (Score:5, Funny)
RH response to Ubuntu's 8 million number? (Score:5, Informative)
Here(2nd page ) Mark Shuttleworth mentioned Ubuntu having 8 million active users:
http://redherring.com/PrintArticle.aspx?a=20497&s
Now what are the hardware vendors waiting for? Permission from Microsoft?
LoB
Re:RH response to Ubuntu's 8 million number? (Score:5, Informative)
It's also important to realize that this metric is just for Fedora Core 6, not "all instances of Fedora 1-6".
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And yes, it's a big deal having data and the technique for getting those numbers. Shuttleworth didn't state where the numbers came from but also wasn't asked. My guess is those numbers came from their date servers since I've seen default Ubuntu installations setting
Anyway, it is great these numbers are get
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Yes.
Ubuntu numbers == Ubullshu (Score:1)
In a way, I think slashdot should take credit for this metric coming to pass [slashdot.org].
It's been obvious to people who "work" with linux, that Ubuntu is trying to be the friendly, cool, slick linux, and portray other distros as the geeks. Just like high school. Of course just like real life, there are more geeks than you realize [imdb.com] and they are a lot more productive than the "slick" people. To counter this, the slick people employ marketing science -- which actually has nothing to do with marketing or science -- it
Actually... (Score:2)
Why only now? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think most of problem of using meme "look at the numbers, user count are huge, man" is that there's lot of geeks which don't see this argument as simply valid (those numbers can't be wrong, etc. etc.). They would like to better convince hardware developers that they MUST get those damn specs (by some hidden morale or simple common sense, which, I agree, exists in this case too) out rather trying to wow them to community side (presentations, numbers, proof of concept (you don't have to care about driver, etc.)).
We need more actions like SpreadFirefox, period. Done right, they just work.
best effort + transparency (Score:5, Informative)
The real "story" here is a couple of things:
THING 1 -- We're making the best effort that we can at showing the world how many installations of Fedora Core 6 we know about.
THING 2 -- We're being upfront about the assumptions and caveats that go along with that number. Quoting:
"Accuracy of metrics
We believe it is reasonable to equate a "new IP address checking in" with "a new installation of FC6", with the following caveats:
1. Users who have dynamic IP addresses will likely be counted multiple times, which inflates the number by some amount.
2. Users who are behind NAT, corporate proxies, or who rsync updates to a local mirror before updating will not be counted at all.
The anecdotal evidence that we receive from different groups, companies, and organizations makes it quite clear that group (2) is significantly larger than group (1). As such, we believe that the true numbers in the field are higher than the numbers on this page."
THING 3 -- We're also being upfront about how that number is generated.
I'm not trying to spin the data in any way. I'm just putting it up there, and trying to do so as objectively as possible. Anyone can draw their own conclusions, or compare it to data from other distributions, if you can find similar reporting.
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KEY POINT TO MAKE: If a user says "no, go away and leave me alone", we will respect that.
To anyone who wants to be part of the discussion, feel free to follow the Fedora Infrastructure list.
http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-infr astructure-list [redhat.com]
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It would be interesting to see stats for CPU and video for FC7 installs, I hope you guys will publish some of that.
A Million+ Fedora 6 Installs (Score:1)
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One thing I haven't noticed being mentioned much is that this only counts the Fedora 6 installs.
Which brings up another question: How many installs are there of all Red Hat and derivatives, including Fedora, RHEL, CentOS, ScientificLinux, etc, etc? That would be interesting to know. And then that's still only Red Hat and derivatives, there is also xUbuntu, Debian, Slackware, Gentoo, Mandriva, you name it. I'd certainly guess that there are at the very least tens of millions of Linux installations across the world.
My six machines share on IP address (Score:2)
However, I have six machines, all of them on Ubuntu server or Kubuntu. One is AMD64, the rest are i386.
So, that skews the numbers for sure.
I wish the Linux Counter is taken more seriously. They used to put an automated email message in Slackware, so the likelyhood of you registering was high. Otherwise, it is only good for comparative studies only, not
PPPoE (Score:1)