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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."
Heathens !
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.
What exactly does Levi Spear Parmly (1790-1859) - the inventor/developer of dental floss - have to do with open source software!
:-)
Or then again, maybe I am just missing something...
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. -- Benjamin Franklin
Oh GOD!
I'm AVERAGE !
noooooo!
What's this Submit thingy do?
In one day, we read:
A review of Vim to get people primed for an editor war.
Next, we read about Which is the better browser, to get that war going.
Now, we just put all our eggs in one basket for an all out flamewar that includes distros, editors, Window Managers, and even will bring up the euro vs. american flamewars.
Sweet lord, people! Wonder why Linux is still having trouble competing with MS? Could it possibly be internal conflicts?
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Results show that Debian is the preferred distribution, GNOME the desktop the majority choose and vi more popular than Emacs.
So what you're saying is, these guys spent a ton of money to produce a giant troll ? Did they happen to say to whether Britney Spears is hotter than Shakira, or which Star Trek TV series was best ?
Patient: Doctor... I seem to have a problem with my teeth.
Doctor: Yes, what is it?
Patient: I have his nagging pain here, is there anything you can do?
Doctor: Let me see... HOLY CRAP! (cough) Well uh... let me put it to you straight. You seem to have a Gnome stuck inbetween your teeth. I'd get the FLOSS out, but I don't think it'd help your problem. Perhaps we should knock your teeth out and replace them all with KDE bridges.
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 !
Nobox: Only simple products.
It's true. Look at the study.
Now, if we compare this to /., where approximately six people have a girlfriend, and half of them are girls, we must conclude that nobody on /. actually does anything useful.
<G>
I agree.
Who *doesn't* use Word to code and edit configuration files?
Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
Let see a survey of mainly European developers prefer free software versus paying higher prices for import software (and hardware.) Geez this has been an reality for decades. Being I used to be a Marketing slime I'll throw in this was always a problem selling U.S. software outside the U.S. because of import costs. Also higher hardware costs outside the U.S. means they tend to run older hardware so they need software with less system requirements. Even more an issue in South America. So is anyone surprised that the results show a free OS that has less system requirements appeals to them. I'm suprised they felt they needed to do a survey to figure it out.
Now they have good taste in editors vi rules! but poor taste in desktops. Gnome oh yuck, it is so five minutes ago.
It is obvious why open source isn't over taking the evil Microsoft empire .... look at the people that they surveyed for the answer:
.... Mainly single males .... maybe some of this stuff needs a women's touch (man, am I going to get flamed for saying that) ... but look at neopets.com. It is the most popular, free online game right now ... why???? Because women like it!!!!!!
... it is skeewed towards software engineers. Where are the systems administrators and network administrators in that list?? I also didn't see that much in terms of University/public researchers .... they are the people that use this stuff!!! I think that the statistician that did this survey needs to go back to Probability & Statistics 101 ... and look at some of the fundemental rules for taking a survey.
.... man can they skeew numbers!!!! (and I bet they're grant money was also listed as "soft money" ....)
99% Males
40% Single
Hmmmmm
Back to the topic, I don't think that the sample of the population makes for a good survey
Debian as the favorite Linux distribution??? Gimme a break!
Gnome?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
I can't stop laughing!!!!
These people must also work for Enron
HallmarkOrnaments.Com
q
Q
GNOME the desktop the majority choose
Not to nitpick, but since when did 33% constitute a majority? FYI, Gnome leads the poll at 33%, with KDE closely behind with 30%.
MS Word is not a text editor, friend.
I don't know anybody that uses Vi or Emacs... both are nasty and inhospitable. Personally, I prefer Midnight Commander for all my programming.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
They all suck hard.
Debian over Red Hat?
VI over Emacs?
Gnome over KDE????
These are the worst representations from the open source community. Didn't anyone tell the people of the EU that they are free and they do have a choice. Don't they know that they can choose from the much better options and the Open Source software is all about the freedom of choice? Those poor oppressed bastards are suffering under the worst of open source and they say they like it.
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.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Debian Weekly News comments on this in their latest issue:
62.3% of Linux users have a (warezed) Windows 2000 partition so that they can play Warcraft III
59.3% of Linux users prefer 'slender, young looking' anime babes to 'busty, voluptuous' anime babes.
only 22.3% of Linux users really think Natalie Portman is all the good looking, even in tight white spandex. Most were just thankful that JarJar only got 2 scenes.
93.2% of Linux users who read Slashdot have JonKatz permanently filtered.
32.3% - Boxers
44.1% - Tighty Whiteys
22.3% - Flappin' in the wind, baby!
62% of Linux users think that 'man' is a threatening name for a documentation application since it's vaguely homoerotic.
58.3% of Linux users think that all polls about free software are orchestrated by Microsoft and are unwilling to trust the results, even if they are positive.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Amen. After finding that ActiveX control (written in VB of course) which does syntax highlighting in Word, I never code in anything else. My productivity has never been higher, with the smart, though seemingly random, indentation rules Word applies. Of course, my compiler's not too sure what to do with .doc files, but my code prints quite nicely.
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
Ah yes, and where, please, is the compiler that accepts MS word documents?
Does that compiler then also interpret the formatting? Such as
Italics = "odd code, don't mess with it too much while optimizing, as it might break"
Bold = "yes, I know what I mean, so please shut up and compile this"
Underlined = "I'm not quite sure if this is right - please compile this in pedantic mode."
BTW, why is the <u> tag not allowed in slashdot comments?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Ah, and to the lameness filter: I'm not yelling myself, I just quote yelling.)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
They didn't count the results from Finnish users, otherwise you would have seen linux from scratch over debian, bash over gnome or kde and lynx over mozilla..
I second this. The default syntax highlighting modes include C, C++, bash, java, html, Makefile, perl, latex, and that's just what I use on a regular basis. The only thing I'd like to have is some kind of auto-complete, and that's because I'm starting in Java so I'm not totally sure of some method names in the API.
And for the file manager... I've been a Norton Commander (and clones) convert since my dad introduced me to it, circa 1988.
Back on subject... You _can_ save a your work from Word as a textfile, but nobody I know does this, because it's not the right tool for the job. Notepad (when you've got nothing else as a real text editor) is better in this respect (if only it could be made to understand Unix EOL...).
It's been so long since I did this, I forgot about JonKatz.
>Ah yes, and where, please, is the compiler that
>accepts MS word documents?
Every version of MS WOrd I've ever used has a "save as text" option.
Your compilers DO take text, right?
-l
I use emacs for Java development. I also build and run and debug the java application using emacs. My co-worker also used emacs for browsing the web and email! MS Word is a word processor and ONLY a word processor. Don't even compare the two.
If you don't know much about emacs, there is an option for you - don't say anything about it!
All your favorite sites in one place!
Well, yeah, sure...GNU Emacs has shipped with vip-mode since the early 90's at least.
Because it's ugly, and the same purpose can be served by italics or bold.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Oh, and it can be confused with links.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
I'm surprised there isn't a troll posting "Emacs is dying" post like the "BSD is dying" posts.
I'd love to see a high quality survey of users and developers of free OSes like GNU/Linux and the BSDs. Something really detailed with tons of questions.
It would be interesting to see the results. Of course, I have no idea how you would keep fraud for messing up the stats for such a thing.
FLOSS is not about the frivolous items discussed in the summary. The poll is only a small part of the study, which goes into great depth in the use and role of free software in companies and in government.
It goes as far as recommending that EU states adopt legislation similar to the one proposed in Argentina, Perú, Colombia and others, mandating the use of free software in government for security reasons. Section 4.2
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?
Lasers Controlled Games!
I really wish they had asked how people find time to develop open-source software. We couldn't expect completely honest answers, of course, but it's always interesting to see how many people not only do open-source work when they're supposed to be doing something else (e.g. paid work or study) but even admit that they do so. A similar question would be about what effects the expenditure of time on open-source projects has had on other aspects of people's lives - e.g. flunked out of school, got fired, lost a girlfriend, etc.
I know that many do open-source work entirely on their own time (or get paid to do it) and manage to find a balance between that and other aspects of their lives. I don't mean to imply otherwise. I just think that any sociological study of open-source developers should pay at least some attention to this "darker side" in addition to the by-now-overdone philosophical and work-habit questions.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
Really, this comment hits the target!
:-)
(it seems that you've really read the documents)
quantitatively!
Who *doesn't* use Word to code and edit configuration files?
So that's what screws up the Registry.
America is run by a mod of globalist, multiculturalists, homosexual Jews. Nader is a sucker. Join The National Alliance (there's even a Canadian Chapter)