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My dear Anonymous:

<snort>

Perhaps you should take a closer look at your copy of Down to Earth REXX. Why yes, that is "Schindler" on the front cover.

As was explained earlier, Lynn and I chose these languages because that's what we had chosen three years ago. And we chose those at the time because they had the highest usage in the Evans Data surveys.

Actually the Article is not that clear who the 6% of developers that are adopting the GPL3. If they are Redhat and IBM and they rather like the GPL3 http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-6171921-7.html then you have nearly 40% of Linux development. Throw in HP and possibly Novell then you can add another 5% to 10% more. I can't see SUN going down the GPL3 path but then you never know. Can anyone shed any light on this because the article does not really say that much although I did find the source of the data at the Evans Data Corporation site http://www.evansdata.com/ but again that was not that helpful since you have to have to register.

Funnily enough, if you look, http://www.evansdata.com/company/clients.php, guess who one of their clients is ?

I'm waiting with baited breath...who? Red Hat? IBM? Apple? Oracle? Sun? Oh, I'm guessing you mean Microsoft... I suppose you're implying that because they have had Microsoft as a client at some point in the past that they are Microsoft's butt monkey or something. Are they also butt monkeys for the other names I listed? How can they be biased for all of their clients at once, when those clients are pushing diametrically opposed positions? Perhaps because they are impartial?

I happen to know someone who works at Evans Data. Yes, their clients are always looking for the results they'd like to see, but a good research company also needs to look out for its own reputation or risk losing credibility. They are scrupulous in their work, doing the research their clients ask for, but without putting a particular spin on the results. In the particular case of Microsoft, Evans Data has done at least a couple of studies for them. The first study they did came out with unfavorable results for MS, and MS subsequently dropped them as a client. MS came back at a later date after licking its wounds and commissioned further research because EDC is a reputable and legitimate company, and skilled at the kind of research they do.

Funnily enough, if you look, http://www.evansdata.com/company/clients.php, guess who one of their clients is ?

They are a Santa Cruz Operation!

Evans Data Corp - Clients
http://www.evansdata.com/company/clients.php

Evans Data Corp - Advisory Board
http://www.evansdata.com/company/about.php

If you want more specific than this; write to them:

740 Front Street, Suite 240
Santa Cruz, CA 95060

Phone: 831.425.8451
Fax: 831.425.7913

Public Relations
Phone: 831.316.0072
Fax: 831.425.7913
pr@evansdata.com

Try this one. Apologies for not checking my link before posting.

Now I have to wait to post the correction.:=(

couldn't say who actually coughed up the money for this one, but they do list M$ as clients. We all know M$ aren't above what we might (generously) call "interesting" techniques when it comes to dealing with the GPL (not least, IIRC, calling it a "cancer"). Evans also list some (what I would call) nicer companies though - especially from the open source POV - including but not limited to RedHat and Sun. You can check out the full list here;

http://www.evansdata.com/company/clients.php

What is this "Evans Data Corporation"? It would be interesting to see any other press releases they have written.

Brag list of their clients and page includes their address phone numbers. Links to more info on the rest of their site included on the web page. They seem to specialize in doing Marketing Research within the tech community, have they ever talked to anyone here? Opinions?

The article cites a survey from Evans Data Corp. that claims PHP use is declining but the rest of the article doesn't support that conclusion.

Zend claims the number of monthly downloads of its Zend integrated development environment (IDE) today number 20,000, up from 5,000 in September 2004, with an accompanying 150% growth in the privately held company's revenue. Furthermore, Zend is opening offices worldwide.

As for stats, Zend points to Netcraft who claims 22m internet domains use PHP, making it the internet's most popular scripting language.

"Microsoft is interested in PHP - the next version of IIS is going to support PHP. If there was no interest, or we were seeing a decline of interest in PHP, why would they get their product to support PHP?" asked Zend vice president of marketing Michel Gerin.

Furthermore, while EDC maintains PHP is not seeing "serious" deployment, Zend claims changes to the language like the addition of Object Orientation (OO) in PHP 5.0 mean the language is going beyond pure web site development and into the enterprise as an alternative to Java and C++.

While adoption may be slowing, PHP is not going away. With an estimated 2.5m PHP developers and web sites going up on a daily basis that have been built using PHP, the language is firmly ensconced in computing's landscape. The only question seems to be: how deep can PHP go in business computing?

The decision by IBM and Oracle to provide native support for PHP in their databases proves they have recognized PHP's ability to harm their core businesses, and their desire to avert any problems by winning over PHP developers

C++ is the only major language with extensive abstraction but without memory safety. All other major languages are either memory-safe or don't hide the underlying machinery. (Java, C#, VB, Perl, Python, etc. all have automatic memory management. Some use garbage collection; some use reference counts. C is unsafe, but hides nothing.) This fact is responsible for millions of program crashes every day. Most security holes in C++ code come from this problem. Java and C# were invented primarily to eliminate the safety problems of C++. The open source community has generally stayed with C, where at least you can see by examination what's going on. C++ is losing market share to Java.

And Strostrup denies this is a problem.

This has happened before. Last time, it was Wirth. Wirth designed Pascal, Modula, and Modula II, but refused to admit that each had serious problems. He fought external compilation in Pascal. He fought extensions to the language. He even fought compile-time arithmetic. In the end, he took Pascal from a major language to a historical footnote.

Serious systems programming was once done in Pascal, but not in Wirth's version of it. The original Macintosh and Lisa software was written in nonstandard versions of Pascal. And much of the DOS era was built on Turbo Pascal. But proliferating nonstandard versions of Pascal caused another set of problems.

C++ has been in decline for years. "Evans Data has found that the percentage of developers using C++ has steadily declined over the last six years--from 76 percent in the spring 1998 to 46 percent in fall 2004." Strostrup also denies that.

The C++ committee has been taken over by template fanatics. Most of the committee's effort revolves around obscure template features that few will use, and which no responsible programming manager would allow on a mission-critical project. There's very little interest in language safety, and a vocal minority that insists language safety is undesirable or impossible.

All is not well in the C++ world. Claming otherwise is irresponsible.

What about the Firebird relational database?

Evans Data says it is the best, in a survey done for 2005, but copyrighted 2003. (I'm uncertain how much they should be trusted.)

Title: Why Linux will conquer the world - Expanded AntiFUD

EXPANDED DRAFT.

PREFACE

This is an extended version of a reply to John Carroll's article... (http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1107-958923.html) My original reply matched John Carroll's article style and language in a attempt to create a side by side comparative document as a measure of the credibility of each sides argument. This extended edition incorporates my responses to the criticism John made concerning the original reply. It is still a draft, but please feel free to adapt and adopt the content and republish at will.

Why Linux will conquer the world

By David Mohring
Special to anyone willing to publish it.

September 28, 2002,

COMMENTARY--. GNU/Linux clearly bears a strong resemblance to Unix. It offers many of the same features, while adding interesting additions of its own ( free licensing, open sourced development, etc).

With the Linux platform the open source/free software community has already created a cross-market software unification infrastructure better than Microsoft has ever had ( or is ). This has result in rapid expansion in Linux's popularity which has eaten into Microsoft server market share as Linux also grows toward taking over the governmental,enterprise, desktop and development world.

There are a number of reasons for this:

1. The breadth of Linux's market presence.

Due to the liberal nature in which Linux is licensed, any real measurements of Linux's current level of deployment is as difficult to determine as the real number computers running pirated versions of Microsoft windows.

Trying to measure the current level of Linux deployment based around the number of computers/servers sold with operating systems installed is flawed. Linux based solutions are often efficient enough to be deployed on pre-existing hardware, whereas Microsoft is dropping support for NT4 and a Windows2000/XP based solutions almost always have a higher level of minimum requirements to do the same job. Also unlike Microsoft OEM license releases, there is no price advantage to purchasing the Linux with the computer, and Evans Data survey discloses that a full 38.9% of new Linux hardware deployments is assembled from parts. (http://www.evansdata.com/computer.htm)

The one exception to measuring the level of Linux based deployments is publicly accessible and query-able Internet servers. In the netcraft September 2001 web server survey. Linux based servers occupy 30% of the market compared to Microsoft's IIS webserver's 27.46% share. As of August 2002, the open source Apache webserver has 63.51% share compared to Microsoft's IIS 25.39%.

Even so, You would be hard pressed to find a software or hardware market where Linux does not have a rapidly increasing presence. Linux works on obsolete hardware (so you needn't throw the hardware away), common modern PC hardware, prototype wrist watchs,PDAs, the Playstation, PlaystationII, Dreamcast and even the XBox consoles, IBM mainframes, massive clusters, and a number of supercomputers . Linux runs on a vast number of different CPU chips, including the x86, Intel Itanium, AMD Hammer, ARM, Alpha, IBM AS/400, SPARC, MIPS, 68k, and Power PC. Linux securely hosts many databases, webservers, file and print servers, from many vendors, scaling both in price and ease, according to need. Linux now has two fully interoperating desktop systems and Libraries, KDE and GNOME, the latters Accessabilty Toolkit with the OpenOffice.org office suite has been singled out in this year's "Helen Keller Achievement Award in Technology". (http://newsvac.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=02/09 /13/1955240) Many vendors are now coming out with Linux based

In a survey done by EDC KDE is used by 65% of Linux developers, while GNOME is used by 56% (some overlap). So I'd guess that KDE's userbase is a bit larger --- remember a lot of Linux users are European, and the biggest distro there (SuSE) is very KDE-centric. Overall, I'd guess KDE has a slightly larger userbase.

The other reason is probably that KDE users are rabid, frothing-at-the-mouth maniacs. In my experience, they're much more enthusiastic than GNOME users. Compare the popularity of dot.kde.org vs gnomedesktop.org (the major news sites for each desktop) and the popularity of kdelook.org vs the popularity of art.gnome.org.

PS> I say the above as a KDE user :)

More popular? Show me one user poll showing that. Not even among developers.

If you want to know about the opinions and behavior of Linux users, then it's important to interview Linux users. Just as it makes sense to learn about wireless development tools, attitudes, and so on by asking wireless developers. The database developer's report interviews developers who are working with databases for a similar reason. Why set up a situation in which a significant percentage of respondents have to answer "not applicable"?

From the information provided, it may not be apparent to you at what level of depth the developers are queried. I believe that Nicholas' report is something like 300 pages long... it's far more than the highlights that he's able to pull out here.

That isn't to say that there isn't useful information to be gained by interviewing 400 randomly chosen developers. In fact, Evans Data does a general North American Developer's Report twice a year, as well as additional reports about development in other countries. Those studies are a cross-section of about 500 "random" developers, so Evans can track trends in the development community at large.

It's not just Linux growth, but what percentage of developers expect to write a wireless app, how many have experienced a network security breach, and so forth. Then we can cross-tabulate by operating system (as well as a bunch of other things, from company size to the kind of apps the respondents write) to determine any correlation between, say, wireless development and primary OS usage. The questions are somewhat more general, since they cover a wider range of subjects.

You'll find a document on the EDC Web site explaining the company's methodology. You'll also find a link that will let you join the developer panel, if you're interested in doing so.

Esther Schindler
Senior Analyst, Evans Data Corp.
(but speaking as herself, here)

I don't know why the E-week story says that "According to the survey, 25 percent of the respondents labeled the current crop of compilers as either 'adequate' or 'needs work'" and that "However, according to the survey, the developers also said that Linux development tools need work."

If you look at the actual data, it looks more like no more than 3.8% said that the compilers "need work." 90% rated the compilers as "adequate" or better, and 70% rated the compilers as "very good" or better.

To me, it looks like they just drew a conclusion that they wanted to draw instead of actually looking at the data.

I commented about this article two days ago here. In it, you could find references to the Evans Data Corporation (EDC) he based his story. Check Primary OS Prior to Mainly Targeting Linux OS or How Important Are 64-Bit Architectures? pages before arguing about Nicholas Petreley's article.

I commented about this article two days ago here. In it, you could find references to the Evans Data Corporation (EDC) he based his story. Check Primary OS Prior to Mainly Targeting Linux OS or How Important Are 64-Bit Architectures? pages before arguing about Nicholas Petreley's article.

I've looked up Evans Data Corporation and have actually found the source. Apparently, most /.ers were too happy jumping up and down in joy to actually bother with this small detail.

SOURCE: Linux Development Survey, Vol. 1 2003: http://www.evansdata.com/n2/surveys/linux_toc_03_1 .shtml

So, let's get this straight... the Slashdot folks are talking about errors in the spelling of the CBC and the RingMouse, but no mention of their laughable coverage of Apple's new OS X? Over the last week or so there have been many trivial sumbmissions posted while there's hardly a peep about a new (BSD, Darwin) open-source based OS that will become the largest UNIX distro within a year? This despite the large media atention given to it and user interest? Hey, I watch CBC NewsWorld every day and misspelling their name is not somethnig to be proud of; but I don't think that this nor what EvansData mistakenly put in a poll is exactly newsworthy compared to something like OS X. Come on Slashdot, post some of the many OS X story submissions you get everyday. Fix the real errors on the site.

Would you have perfered a title of "Do not buy a report from these people" or "Linux marketing data tainted" or "FreeBSD deleted" or what?

The purpose of the poll was to gain Linux marketing data. Yet 20% of the respondants included data needing to be pulled. Or the purpose of the poll needs to be expanded/changed because the data gathered shows a trend not expected and now needs to be accounted for.

If the poll got 20% "bad data" and was to be linux research (and not a propaganda piece for RedHat, lets say) then the poll was a bad tool to do that research.

If the company can't be troubled to filter out the "bad data" - "bad data" that is large enough to be in the #2 catagory for popularity (RedHat@277 votes vs Suse@64/Mandrake@64/Caldera@63/FreeBSD@60) then why would you buy a report from a company that can't process data...data that is supposed to show information about the "Linux" market.

Go read what the report was to be about.
http://www.evansdata.com/Linux01TOC.htm

The current paradigm is, you must go out and see if there are security holes and procure the patches yourself. This is progress. Can't just blame M$, even IBM does this (I learned of the rlogin -froot bug by catching the culprit in the act, not by a bulletin from IBM, whee.)

Want to see which of the Linux are most popular?

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