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

Vi more popular than Emacs ?

[Salsaman]

Heathens !

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.

Re:Vi more popular than Emacs ?

[Loligo]

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

Most reprehinsible programmers I know would rather use Visual Studio because of power and ease of use...

Re:Vi more popular than Emacs ?

[STREMF]

Most respectable programmers I know would rather redirect stdin to a file with cat because of power and ease of use...

Re:Vi more popular than Emacs ?

[dattaway]

Google never lies:

vi: 25,400,000. Search took 0.11 seconds.
emacs: 2,900,000. Search took 0.08 seconds.

Looks like a factor of 10 to me.

Re:Vi more popular than Emacs ?

[athakur999]

Well that's hardly fair. Once you get past the first few pages, most of the results have nothing to do with VI the editor, rather they're VI the Roman numeral, Vi the person, etc.

EMACS isn't a Roman numeral nor is it anyone's name (hopefully).

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:Gnome over KDE?

[BitterOak]

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.

Well, the statistical uncertainty on a sample of 2200 is sqrt(2200) which is approximately 47, and 2% of 2200 is 44, so we are talking about slightly less than a 1 sigma effect. So you're right, it's not statistically significant.

Re:Gnome over KDE?

[Arandir]

What is the statistical uncertainty on a self-selected sample of 2200? My guess is in the neighborhood of 2150...

Re:Gnome over KDE?

[prockcore]

Yes, but how many of those KDE users use Gnome/Gtk apps every day, versus Gnome users who use KDE/qt apps every day?

I think it's safe to say that Gnome/Gtk is more widely used when you take the apps into account.

Perhaps some can explain to me...

[NOT-2-QUICK]

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... :-)

Is this some kind of a joke?!?!?

[FortKnox]

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?

Re:Is this some kind of a joke?!?!?

[red_dragon]

Wonder why Linux is still having trouble competing with MS? Could it possibly be internal conflicts?

But our standards are good! We have so many to choose from!

Re:Is this some kind of a joke?!?!?

[Tony-A]

But our standards are good! We have so many to choose from!
Wisecrack, but a lot of truth in there.
Many standards. Better odds of being able to find a good fit.
The real payout comes from such as using KDE apps on a GNOME desktop and using GNOME apps on a KDE desktop. The BSDs running native LINUX binaries, sometimes better than under LINUX it seems some claim.
Anybody particularly concerned by internal confilicts will be buying support from such as Red Hat, IBM or Sun.

Executive summary

[tmark]

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 ?

A Dangerous Report...

[deathinc]

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 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.

Re:This is shit

[bfields]

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.

No, they should have picked a few people at random and offered significant incentives to get a good response rate (an entry into a raffle plus an explanation of why their contribution would be helpful might be sufficient).

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.

No, increasing the size of the sample wouldn't have helped; if you work out the statistics, I suspect you'd find that the size of their sample was already much higher than necessary. It's the quality of the sample that counts. Subtle biases in the choice of people that responded (in this case, they were much more likely to get people that visited certain websites) cause inaccuracies that no increase in sample size would help.

Consider two surveys of preferences on presidential candidates; survey A was based on interviewing 200 people chosen uniformly at random from the set of registered voters; survey B was based on interviewing 2000 attendees of a Democratic convention; which result will be more accurate? The biases created by the self-selecting sample in this case may be more subtle than that, but I can think of some (I'm sure you can too), and I suspect a survey based on a more carefully chosen sample would give very different results.

--Bruce F.

Most free software developers have a girlfriend

[Elladan]

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>

Re:Who cares about vi versus emacs?

[Ig0r]

I agree.
Who *doesn't* use Word to code and edit configuration files?

They need a better survey

[mustangdavis]

It is obvious why open source isn't over taking the evil Microsoft empire .... look at the people that they surveyed for the answer:

99% Males
40% Single

Hmmmmm .... 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!!!!!!

Back to the topic, I don't think that the sample of the population makes for a good survey ... 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.

Debian as the favorite Linux distribution??? Gimme a break!

Gnome?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

I can't stop laughing!!!!

These people must also work for Enron .... man can they skeew numbers!!!! (and I bet they're grant money was also listed as "soft money" ....)

Re:They need a better survey

[oliverthered]

20% were optimistic and predicted they wouldn't be single when the results were published.

another 20% lied.

ITS OFFICIAL!

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

Great! So it's official! Emacs sucks and vi is best!

q

Q

:qq

;quit

;alt_ctrl_del

;F4

;sh!t how do I exit this post?

Re:ITS OFFICIAL!

[Loligo]

>;sh!t how do I exit this post?

Ctrl-Shift-Meta-A Alt-Q.

Re:Who cares about vi versus emacs?

[cr@ckwhore]

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.

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...

Re:Self-selected sample

[grex]

You can see here where it has been announced. This are the weblogs and mailing lists I know of, there are sure multiple other sites and lists where this survey was announced.

OTOH, if you have a look at other surveys (WIDI -
final report), you'll see that Debian is among developers the preferred distribution. WIDI was announced in Slashdot (main page), Heise.de and several other news sites that aren't related to the Debian project.

Re:Self-selected sample

[Arandir]

A quick check of WIDI shows that Debian gets a 26%. That's a far cry from the 48% this survey shows. As for the OSE study, Debian was one of their sample pools to start with, so of course it's going to be skewed in that direction.

Other survey results...

[Bonker]

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.

Re:Other survey results...

[Papineau]

62.3% of Linux users have a (warezed) Windows 2000 partition so that they can play Warcraft III

No need for that. Wine (and Winex) will play Warcraft III.

And according to Blizzard and their crushing of bnetd, it's rather the opposite (62.3% of Linux users have a (warezed) version of Warcraft III)

Re:Other survey results...

[liquidsin]

28.6% of poll respondents were confused by the lack of a "Cowboy Neal" option.

Re:Other survey results...

[mbadolato]

99% of geeks that are constipated, really just don't give a shit

Re:Who cares about vi versus emacs?

[Papineau]

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...).

Re:Who cares about vi versus emacs?

[Loligo]

>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

Re:Who cares about vi versus emacs?

[teetam]

This is the stupidest comment I have heard in a long time. Emacs not a fixed line editor - it is anything you want it to be.

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!

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?

Missing question

[Salamander]

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.

Re:Who cares about vi versus emacs?

[Tony-A]

Who *doesn't* use Word to code and edit configuration files?
So that's what screws up the Registry.