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."

Comments

Mostly Useless

[Kruemelmo]

This has really become useless, hasn't it. While many geeks would register some years ago, the big majority of Linux users wouldn't ever today.

In a way, everyone is a Linux user as soon as they surf the net, using apache installations. If the number of non-geek desktop Linux users grows, they certainly won't register there because they just won't care.

There are more reliable ways to get estimates for numbers of Linux users.

Finally, the counter is currently slashdotted.