FLOSS Developer Survey Results Published

grex writes "The FLOSS (Free/Libre/Open Source Software) study from the University of Maastricht has published its final report. One of its five parts is the developer survey based basically on developers from the European Union. Results show that Debian is the preferred distribution, GNOME the desktop the majority choose and vi more popular than Emacs. But this survey also handles economic, law-related and motivation aspects among developers that make it very interesting to read."

Comments

Gnome over KDE?

[zmalone]

The difference between the two is only ~2%, in Gnomes favor. This out of of a group of a little over 2200, I don't know if I would consider that a large enough percentage to consider it to be anything other then a margin of error.

Re:Vi more popular than Emacs ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most respectable programmers I know would rather use Vi because of power and ease of use...

Re:Vi more popular than Emacs ?

[redfenix]

One might note that vi only won out by a mere 2.6% vote (38.8% vs. 36.2%). So, this could be just a mere margin of error, all in all a very close race.

Of course, being a vi user myself should show that I have no personal reasons to point this out.

This is shit

[AdamInParadise]

This study is shit. It was based on voluntary user input and it was heavily advertized on some hardcore Linux websites, so it isn't reprensentative at all. This explains vi vs. emacs, Gnome vs. KDE, Debian vs. the world...

The industry produces seriously flawed studies. This goes to prove that the open-source world can too !

Re:This is shit

[FreeLinux]

As a report discussing the pros and cons as well as the adaptation of OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE, where else would they get their data? You think that they should have gotten their report from Bill Gates?

As for the input being from voluntary users; you think they should have rounded up a few thousand people off the street, at gun point, and asked their opinioin? You're not making sense.

It is an excellent report, regardless of your stand on open source. It would have been better if they could have had a larger sampling but, this is not always possible due to time or budgetary constraints.

Flawed Survey

[Arandir]

This survey consisted entirely of self-selected participants. The surveyors actually seemed to boast that they didn't select anyone themselves. This study is bogus and proves nothing.

The staggering support for Debian (48%!) only proves that Debian developers are more successful in recruiting other Debian developers to participate in bogus online survey's. This isn't a dig against Debian, it's a dig against the silly methodology of this study.

This survey, despite its seemingly thoroughness, is no more valid than the weekly Slashdot Poll. The only conclusion that can be drawn from this survey is that Debian, GNOME and vi users are more likely to participate in a self-selected survey than Redhat, SuSE, Mandrake, KDE and emacs users.

Self-selected sample

[rubinson]

The problem with these results is that the sample was self-selected. Whoever wanted to respond to the survey could. So, these results don't tell us anything about the Free Software development community as a whole; rather it just tells us about those people who knew about the survey and chose to respond to it.

Debian Weekly News comments on this in their latest issue:

The FLOSS (see below) survey is finished and the results were posted. The most interesting bit is the number of Debian users among the participants, however, since we pointed out that survey, we may have contributed a little bit to the trend...

Majority?

[John Harrison]

GNOME the desktop the majority choose

Gnome 32.52%
KDE 30.05%
Mac 2.3%
Pure Text 8.37%
Windows 3.56%
Other 23.19%

Since when is 32.52% a majority? This is less than one third, and certainly not more than half, which is waht was indicated by the summary. Of course, I am an idiot for expecting accuracy on /., right?