Nick Petreleley on Linux Taking Market Share From Windows

These are LinuxWorld columnist Nick Petreley's answers to your questions about the (somewhat controversial) Evans Data Survey he helped analyze that shows Linux is taking more market share from Windows than from Unix.

Nick:

Before I answer the questions, allow me to correct some misperceptions that I have seen with respect to my former article in LinuxWorld on this topic.

The myth that is debunked by the Evans Data survey is that Linux is taking more market share away from Unix than from Windows. The data is conclusive on this matter with respect to Linux developers from a wide variety of software development environments. More developers who focus primarily on Linux used to focus primarily on Windows than Unix. So there is a much greater shift from Windows to Linux among developers than from Unix to Linux. The attempts to explain it away that I've seen are usually based on one or more errors:

1. Most people still use Windows as a client OS.

Of course this is true, but it has nothing to do with the myth. Unix has practically no market share at all on the client, so it is mystifying that anyone would think that the myth is based on client market share. Why would anyone try to perpetuate a myth that Linux is taking away more market share from Unix than Windows on the client if there's virtually no Unix client market share to divert to Linux? It should be self-evident that the myth relates primarily (if not exclusively) to servers. As Linux gains client market share, it will be from Windows, and there will be no myth to debunk.

2. Evans surveyed only those companies that are involved in Linux development.

First, the purpose of the Evans report was to uncover trends, needs, desires, opinions, and decisions among developers who use Linux at least part of the time. One does not ask developers who never use Linux for this information. The fact that the data debunked the popular myth that Linux takes market share primarily from Unix is a fascinating side-benefit, but it was not the purpose of the survey.

However, the same logic on who to ask still applies to this side-conclusion. Here is the question answered by the data: Among those developers who now focus primarily on Linux, which did more of them have as their primary focus beforehand -- Windows or Unix? The only way to get an answer to this question is:

1. You must ask the question of people who now have Linux as their primary development host or target.

2. You must ask the question of that subset of Linux developers who switched from some other platform as their primary platform to Linux as their primary host or target.

This is precisely what Evans did. Evans asked those who switched to Linux as their primary host or target what platform they switched from. Does anyone honestly believe it makes more sense to ask those who use Windows or Unix as their primary platform what they used to use before they switched to Linux as their primary platform?

The only question is, were these developers honest? The fact that 50% of these developers still focus primarily on Windows as of this year should tell you that we're not talking about a survey of Linux fanatics. That isn't the only thing that supports their candor, however. These developers were brutally honest in their answers regarding Linux tools, distributions, etc. All of the answers reflected reality, not zealous Linux advocacy. With the permission of Evans, I may address some of these other results in a future article.

Now, on to the questions:

1) So that 40% number...
by Anonymous Coward

...the one where 40% of developers are writing mainly to Linux. Where does that stat come from, and what does "developers" mean? It sounds really nice, but if it were true I as a Linux user would expect to see a lot more apps. Does it come from Sourceforge numbers? Does it come from a poll at a website; maybe a Slashdot, Kuro5hin or Newsforge poll? Is it of *all* developers, or of *paid* developers, or of developers of open-source developers or in-house developers or developers of commercial software? Does it include platform-agnostic developers (ie. Java/ perl/ ASP/ PHP/ .NET)? If so, which side does it put them on? Also, what is the error margin of the poll?

I know a bit about statistics, and more about Linux, and something smells fishy. Linux is good, so I figure the numbers are bad.

Nick:

Evans Data sent out a survey to about 400 developers who are either known to have some involvement in Linux development, or work for companies that are involved in Linux development. The degree of involvement is not the critical issue, as is obvious from the results, since even now more of the developers they surveyed focus primarily on Windows than Linux. The developer responses indicate that ratio will reverse as of next year, but that was obviously unknown until they returned the survey, so it wasn't a qualifying factor. The survey included developers from all walks of life, but as far as I know, all of them are paid developers. There were many who work in very small companies (generally VARs and consultants), some who work at ISVs producing commercial software, some who work in IT departments and write custom applications for internal use, etc. The report is very detailed as to how this breaks down, and it even shows what kinds of decisions VARs tend to make as opposed to the kinds of decisions developers at ISVs tend to make.

Here's what you may have misunderstood. The 40% number does *not* mean that 40% of developers worldwide are focusing primarily on Linux, nor does Evans represent it that way. It means 40% of the developers Evans surveyed, and those developers were pre-selected by their use of Linux. This makes perfect sense, because the study was meant to discover information about the decisions, needs, and desires of developers who use Linux, whether they use it occasionally or all the time.

You may have been confused by some of my own pet theories as to why Linux market share growth is overlooked, but I offered that information as supplemental to the Evans data. One of my pet theories was confirmed by the data. But that was never intended as "proof" that Linux has 40% market share among *all* developers because that was not the conclusion of the survey. The 40% figure was part of several figures that refute the myth that Linux takes more share away from Unix than Windows.

The survey did not ask questions about languages such as PHP, Python and Perl, but the data suggests that a very large portion of developers use PHP, Perl or Python and other languages for web development since a very large number checked "other" in areas where those languages would apply. As far as I know, Evans plans to be specific about these languages and platforms in the next survey.

By the way, .Net is not platform-agnostic, but Mono and DotGNU promise to provide some of the .Net framework. About half the developers surveyed said they will adopt Mono or DotGNU if they are successful. Only a small portion of developers object to the idea of Mono and DotGNU enough to refuse to use it, so the vast majority do not have a strong philosophical objection to .Net (yet another confirmation that we're not talking about zealots). It is revealing, however, that only about 17% of the developers currently use .Net, and almost twice that amount use Sun ONE. This suggests they simply do not want to use .Net itself, or that it is not compelling enough to justify the price tag or to stick with Windows. There are other possible explanations, and perhaps Evans will uncover them in the next survey.

2) Differences
by The Bungi

What is the difference between you and the people who are demonized and flamed to no end because they quote seemingly unreliable and baseless statistics to support the idea that Windows is doing well in the market place? That Windows is better than Linux as a server OS?

It seems to me that for the past four or five years I've been seeing "statistics" and "studies" to the tune of "Linux is enterprise-ready" and "Linux will overtake the desktop" and "Linux rulez". What's different today?

Nick:

If you're talking about being demonized, there is no difference. To one extent or another, I have been demonized for practically everything I write. I've learned to live with it, though, since it is an occupational hazard.

Statistics are reliable as long as you collect them properly. To the best of my knowledge, these were collected properly. What is generally unreliable - in those cases where statistics are rendered unreliable - is the analysis of those statistics. Whether or not the analysis is intentionally flawed or simply poorly done is debatable, depending on the circumstances. Sometimes it is flawed simply because the analyst speculated but failed to communicate that the conclusions were based on spculation.

As far as this particular report is concerned, I did my best to analyze the statistics based on what could be gleaned from the actual data, and whenever I applied speculation, I made every effort to communicate that it was speculation.

Survey results are often dubbed "unreliable" or "baseless" because the results are either designed to confirm the conclusions of the company that commissions the survey, or because the results are misrepresented, or both. I could easily misrepresent the Evans Data if it were my intent to deceive. For example, the survey showed that the respondents have experienced virtually no security breaches or viruses on Linux (the number of experiences is so small as to be statistically insignificant). But each year, fewer respondents say the open source model is inherently more secure, despite the fact that their own experience contradicts this perception. If I wanted to spread fear about open source, I could quote what the respondents "feel" without revealing the hard data regarding what they actually experience. I'm afraid that's what some analysts or research companies may do, which is why they get a deservedly bad reputation. This study does not deserve that kind of reputation. As for what "rulez", my statement in my recent column that Linux is a better server platform than Windows is my own, although it is confirmed by several case studies. I would be surprised if these case studies haven't already appeared on slashdot.

3) IDC credibility
by Animats

IDC is always publishing those studies about future market share, but where are the studies comparing past IDC predictions with the actuals?

We can't even get solid Internet traffic statistics. Look at the mess Worldcom's inflated traffic numbers caused.

Nick:

First, anyone who has read my articles for long would know that I am one of the world's most severe critics of research organizations and their analysts. I am still very suspicious of most research reports and the analysts who help produce them. Exceptions include Dan Kuznetsky (IDC), who is quite good, and Esther Schindler (Evans), who is also extremely good. There are others, of course, but these come immediately to mind.

I agree that someone should keep a record of research company predictions and hold them accountable for their errors. I maintain that this is a good idea, and I have suggested it before.

Having said that, allow me to correct your perceptions on a few issues. First, the report is from Evans Data, not IDC. Second, while the data does make predictions, the primary issue I addressed was not a prediction, it concerned data regarding existing Linux developers. Of those developers who currently focus primarily on Linux, more used to focus primarily on Windows than Unix. If you want to add the prediction to that, here it is: Of ALL these developers (including those we surveyed who still focus primarily on Windows), more plan to focus primarily on Linux next year than Windows. As it is, more focus primarily on Windows today.

Before I correct one last possible misperception, it may help you to understand how the process worked.

They gave me the survey to review. I commented on the questions as best I could, given that this was my first project of this type and I wasn't sure what they were most interested in discovering from the data. (Remember that these reports have a dual-purpose. They exist to serve clients of Evans Data, and they also provide interesting results for the general public.) They made almost all of my suggested changes (some would have made the survey too long, which is a perfectly reasonable concern, so we condensed some questions to compensate).

By the way, do not read too much into that part about serving clients of Evans Data. Yes, I suspect that in some cases companies commission reports in order to get the results they want. That is one reason why I am so critical of research groups and their reports. But neither the survey nor the way Evans handled the process ever hinted at this kind of manipulation. As far as I can tell, the commercial purpose of the survey had nothing to do with whether or not developers are moving from Windows to Linux. It had more to do with what existing Linux developers want and need.

Anyway, some time later, I received the results, along with many standard cross-tabulations of the data. I had just over a week to produce the report, which was extremely difficult, but Evans was very responsive and cooperative. Sometimes the data suggested a conclusion or trend but didn't confirm it. In some cases, I was able to confirm my suspicions by requesting a cross-tabulation of data to isolate who was saying what. In other cases, the best I could say was something like, "the data suggests X, but there could be other explanations." But Evans ALWAYS responded to my questions about possible errors, ALWAYS produced the cross-tabulations I requested without even asking why, and NEVER suggested that I change my conclusions or approach to analysis. Evans even responded to requests for cross-tabulations when the answer I was looking to understand had little or nothing to do with its target audience.

In only one case did Evans ever suggest a trend I didn't see for myself, and they were very careful to say that I could toss out that conclusion if I didn't agree that the data suggested this trend. They pointed out that despite the increase in developers who make Linux their primary focus, there was also a big increase in those who develop on multiple platforms. That change was obviously valid, because the hard data confirmed it. The problem is that I was unable to explain from the data why this apparent paradox existed. We would have had to ask more questions to qualify it. Personally, I think the answer is obvious, but because we asked no questions to prove my analysis, I simply suggested it as a possibility in the report (along with at least one other possibility). In a strong economy, companies dedicate developers to projects full-time, and that produces more people who spend all their time on a single platform. A down economy tends to force companies to reduce the number of programmers who are dedicated to a project full time. More people work on several projects at once, some of which include platforms other than their primary platform, whether that is Windows, Linux, or something else.

Now, since I haven't seen the final version of the report, it is entirely possible that Evans edited what I finally submitted into something abominable. But given the way they handled the entire process from start to finish, I can't even begin to imagine why this would be the case. As far as any of their dealings with me and the data were concerned, I never even perceived a hint of integrity problems.

4) Linux Usage Growth
by Dios

Ok, this statement was thrown in my face a while back.

Its easy to go from 1 to 2 users or 2 to 4 and claim a fantastic growth rate, but what constitutes that magic number of users before its truly a desktop operating system being used daily by enough of a mass to catch the attention of large software development firms that will create/port applications to linux?

Is growth rate in terms of number of desktops conquered (eg growth rate of 1.5 million desktops a year) a better measuring stick than doubled/tripled/whatever the number of users in X years. What, in your opinion, is a good measuring tool in determining the growth rate/acceptance of linux in the market?

Nick:

I don't know of any good measure of growth rates. Your example is perfectly valid. One of the most amusing examples of error in this regard has to do with spin. I know of a magazine that quoted endlessly (years ago) that OS/2 was a dead-end operating system because it only had 2,000 native applications. Later, the same magazine published a story about how Windows NT was gaining good momentum, as evidenced by its 1,200 native applications.

And, as I said in my article, even accurate numbers about existing market share (not growth) can be deceiving. If one company uses 50 Linux servers to do the same job as 100 Windows servers used by another company, Windows appears to be the more popular platform because it has a greater market share. Yet the only reason Windows has a greater market share is because it takes more Windows boxes to do the same amount of work. Whether or not you agree with the assumption that Linux outperforms Windows, hopefully you can see that market share figures do not reflect important information.

5) Dear Nicholas Petreley (Score:5, Funny)
by slashuzer

You might be unaware of this fact, but the words Usage Statistics, IDC, study, etc trigger some deep emotions in the slashdot community.

So can you tell me, Is BSD dying?

Nick:

I have no idea if BSD is dying. I personally believe BSD is an excellent operating system, so I hope it does not die. Again, it was Evans, not IDC. The Evans study didn't ask much about BSD, but what it did ask revealed that the respondents consider it to be one of the most secure operating systems available (particularly OpenBSD).

6) Distros and numbers
by farrellj

Part of the problem in counting the number of Linux desktops/servers/etc. is that anyone can get it from any of a million different places (friends, ftp, subscriptions, etc.), but the industry tends only to count sales. I know for a fact that every CD I have of Linux I have installed it on at least 10 other systems...some are upgrades, others are new users, and still others moving over from another distro.

And this leads to the other problem...what are the *real* usage stats on distros? It's hard to tell. From talking to people, a lot of people use Slackware and Debian for servers, Red Hat, Suse and Mandrake for desktops...but how can we really count who is using what?

Nick:

This was a survey of developers who use Linux at least some of the time, so it had nothing to do with sales, friends, etc.

As I said in my LinuxWorld article, Red Hat was by far the most popular distribution. Debian was the most popular non-commercial distribution. You wouldn't find many surprises in the rest of the list. The survey didn't really identify what people use the most on servers vs. desktops. But they use Red Hat the most, period.

Interestingly, most respondents think the issue of commercial vs. non-commercial is irrelevant, although only by a slim margin over those who prefer a commercial version. Even more interesting was the dichotomy between those who prefer commercial distributions and those who prefer non-commercial. They seem to disagree the most about what constitutes the strength of a commercial or non-commercial distribution. One gets the impression they have not tried a distribution from the "other side".

7) Linux announcements from big companies...
by L0stb0Y

Do you see announcements from heavy hitters (like Dell, IBM, etc) helping sway more 'desktop users' to switching to Linux?

Nick:

This is only my opinion, not something from the report, but yes, I believe those announcements do help a lot. If anything from the survey supports this conclusion, it is that the respondents favor IBM by far over other hardware companies, and IBM has been the most vocal about Linux. On the other hand, Dell was highly rated, too, and there has been a lot of controversy over Dell support for Linux.

8) My question
by damu

Do you think statistics are nothing more of a marketing tool, and should the open source community use these numbers (usually squeued) to get some leverage when promoting open source alternatives to the higher ups?

Nick:

Statistics are what you make them. After that, assuming you tried to get the most objective and realistic statistics, their true value vs. manipulative value still depends on how you use the results.

As for what you make them, you can ask the same question hundreds of ways. Some forms of a question will get you the answer you "want". Other forms of the same question are more likely to get you an honest, objective and informative answer. There are techniques such as "distractors", etc., that can help, if honesty is what you want.

The problem is that honesty is not always what one wants. And even when the survey turns up honest answers, it is easy to distort the results if that is what you want to accomplish.

What the open source community does with statistics is up to the open source community and the conscience of the individuals within it. Personally, my religious convictions are the motivating force behind everything I do, so I am committed to the truth. If I stray from the truth, it is because I'm far from perfect, whether that imperfection surfaces as an imperfect attitude or simply a careless mistake. But I can't tell the open source community what should drive their motives. Each one should probaly act according to his own conscience.

9) At what point will Linux reach critical mass?
by molarmass192

At what level of penetration (% install base share) will Linux reach critical mass on the desktop? It's much less relevant from a server perspective since it appears that Linux already has reached critical mass on that front. Should we assume that when Linux supplants Apple as the number two platform (although this has already happened from what I have seen, nobody is stating it yet in the mass media), that we will see a proliferation of commercial Linux offerings and (more importantly) better OEM hardware support?

Nick:

I have no idea what point would be considered critical mass. I'm not even sure it is a good idea to measure critical mass in terms of installed base. This was a good measurement for commercial products, but Linux has an appeal that transcends commercial software. It is open source and free, and those two elements make it difficult if not impossible for any commercial software company to compete.

The Evans Data survey showed that developers choose Linux first because it is stable, second because it is open source, and third because of the low cost. Commercial software can be made stable, but it is not likely that some companies will ever open their source code (make it truly open, that is, not just let people have a supervised peek at it now and then). And, as the folks at what used to be Netscape know only too well, it is very difficult to compete with "free as in beer", no matter how much propaganda you spout about total cost of ownership. (Of course, bundling was an issue there, too, but the point about free is still hard to deny.)

Speaking strictly for myself, I would say the desktop is a unique market that will transform radically over the next several years. Personally, I think digital rights management (DRM), Palladium (or whatever it's called this week), and the evolution of media centers and game consoles pose a much more serious threat to Linux on the desktop than market share or OEM bundling.

10) Gathering data.
by CHK6

How is the data gathered and is the same techniques used for other OSes in comparison? Also do you consider coporate desktops or personal desktops? I ask this because many employees would rather use Linux as their primary desktop, but management strong arms Windows.

Nick:

See above for more details on how the data was gathered. The survey had little to do with desktop vs. server Linux use. It was focused on development and the needs of developers. Evans asked whether they were developing more for desktop or server applications. As it turns out, most of the developers work on server-side applications. Based on the data, a good deal of the development is dedicated to web-based applications. There is also significant and growing activity and interest in using Linux on 64-bit architectures and embedded systems.

I know of many people who are strong-armed into using Windows. But since these companies are making money by developing on Linux and for Linux, I would guess that it is doubtful they are being strong-armed to use Windows.

------------

Bio: Nicholas Petreley is a consultant and freelance writer based in Asheville, NC. He was founding editor of LinuxWorld, and hosts the non-profit weblog VarLinux.org. He can be reached at nicholas@petreley.com.

Comments

Forgot to ask...

[Anonymous Coward]

How much market share is Linux taking from Mac OS X or is Mac OS X taking market share from Linux? It once was a candy coated GUI with pansy kernel but now, Mac OS X is fire-breathing UNIX workstation w/ a candy coated GUI.

Then again, is it technically possible to reduce Apple's market share?

Re:Forgot to ask...

[spanky1]

Then again, is it technically possible to reduce Apple's market share?

Yes, if you use imaginary numbers. (See older slashdot article.)

Re:Forgot to ask...

[Qapf]

When did OS X defunk itself. I Still see Mac desktops crashing daily with extension issues and slowing up for no paticular reason.

Re:Forgot to ask...

[JHromadka]

When did OS X defunk itself. I Still see Mac desktops crashing daily with extension issues and slowing up for no paticular reason.

Mac OS X does not use extensions. That is OS9.

Re:Forgot to ask...

[Anonymous Coward]

I know tons of people who are leaving Linux and Windows for OSX on the desktop. Of course Linux is the server OS of choice, it's just awesome to be able to do all your development on a box with an awesome GUI and software that is usually *better* than what runs on windows.

Re:Forgot to ask...

[IamTheRealMike]

Pretty pointless question. Both of them have such miniscule marketshare that it's impossible to get useful statistics.

Also bear in mind that the question is slanted in favour of MacOS - it's possible to measure sales of Macs, whereas nobody knows how many people "switch" from Windows to Linux (of course, people rarely go cold turkey over night).

Re:Forgot to ask...

[Almost-Retired]

Unforch, one of the reasons mac's OS9 was rather quickly passed over and on into OSX, was that OS9 is a registered trademark then owned by the MicroWare Corporation in Des Moines IA, USA, and now owned by Radisys for a multiuser/multitasking operating system that originally ran on specialized hardware for use with the moto 6809 cpu, made by GIMIX at the time, and on the TRS-80 Color Computer (even the 64k memory versions could run it) and was subsequently developed into OSK for the m68k cpu's, and OS9000 for intel cpu's.

I'd imagine that when the mac OS9 was released, there was an exchange of letters between MicroWare and Apple indicating MicroWares general displeasure with such a revolting turn of events, and which had the effect of hastening OSX out the door a year early.

Its truely major useage was as the optional OS for the Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer, all 3 versions over the years, where it showed up the offerings from M$ so bad that some shack people were told to not demo what it could do for fear of trashing an intel based box sale which had more 'spiff' attached to it anyway.

It would, we users think, have made a much larger impression on the computing scene had the intel versions not been priced at 5 to 20x what the 'other guys' were selling their crappy OS for. But MicroWare wasn't terribly interested in mass sales because that also equaled massive support costs, so they chose the massive price route with support as part of the sales contract. Such automaticly limited sales to those who could afford a seat at the table.

It was a stable system, achieving uptimes in some cases that would make even the oldtimer unix admin a bit jealous, one instance of almost 7 years is on record, and many, many "coco's" ran from power failure to power failure. When was the last time you saw a traffic signal controller that was crashed? It runs at least half of them.

I still have one of them in the basement, sporting a 1 gig scsi hard drive, 2 monitors (independent, not the current wide screen thing) and all the other goodies to make it a usefull machine.

As an educational tool for someone wanting to study how a computer actually works, that "Trash 80 color computer" has, not even today, 20 years after it was first offered for sale, no equal in the teaching field because that os is the single, most documented os ever written. It came with an assembler, and several other languages were also available including a fairly K&R C, a Basic modeled after TrueBasic, and a pascal, and aftermarket folks even had a decent forth for it.

But my soapbox is getting old and creaky just like me, so I'll give it a rest. Your basic trivia lesson for the day :-)

--
Cheers, Gene

Mislead by slashdot

[DeadSea]

If the article and the slashdot writeup had been written like the following, we would have never had to ask for so much clarification (added peices in bold):

Nicholas Petreley has a great article over at LinuxWorld explaining why it seems that Windows has such a high market share when 40% of developers who use Linux are focusing primarily on Linux. From the summary: "There are dozens of reasons why people have underestimated how quickly Linux has been grabbing Windows' market share. Windows starts out with a false boost and maintains its illusory market share even as it gets replaced by Linux. In 2004, don't be surprised when Linux overtakes Windows to become the main focus for developers who sometimes use Linux."

Re:Mislead by slashdot

[ergo98]

Other startling facts:

-People who have cigarettes in their pocket often are smokers. Conclusion: Putting cigarettes in your pocket causes you to start smoking.

-People with heavy pockets often have lots of spare change. Conclusion: Heavy pockets are especially desirable for spare change, which will often cluster together in a heavy mass of metal.

-There is a startling correlation between owning a Ferrari and having lots of money. Conclusion: Buying a Ferrari causes one to suddenly come into wealth.

Re:Mislead by slashdot

[TopShelf]

Oh come on, if they did that it wouldn't have been nearly as interesting, would it? How else are they gonna crank up the banner ad numbers without hot topics like this???

Re:Mislead by slashdot

[B3ryllium]

Exactly :) That's one of the main problems with statistics - if you aren't careful in the way you state your results, you can say or imply something completely different from what the numbers reveal.

In other news, 79.5% of statistics are made up. And Slashdot is comprised of 72% Windows users.

Re:Mislead by slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

What on Earth are you talking about? If you feel you have spotted a flaw in the guy's logic, point it out. I can see no such flaw. I suspect you haven't understood what he's saying.

Re:Mislead by slashdot

[ergo98]

The original article triumphantly proclaimed that 40% of developers were focused on Linux, cleverly failing to mention that that 40% is among the subset of developers who develop for Linux... It's akin to saying that 99% of people are smokers...if you only include people with cigarettes in their pocket.

Re:Mislead by slashdot

[Ooblek]

I agree with the need for the added statements. The initial statement was a generalization that was obviously wrong. But he also seems to be skirting the question of how the statistics were compiled. He says:

Evans Data sent out a survey to about 400 developers who are either known to have some involvement in Linux development, or work for companies that are involved in Linux development.

And then goes on to say:

Statistics are reliable as long as you collect them properly. To the best of my knowledge, these were collected properly.

It appears they were collected properly, as long as you wanted to prove that "People who use Linux" == "People who use Linux"

Hey, can they help me run for U.S. President? I'm sure with their statistic-manipulating prowess, we can convince the population of the U.S. that I need to be elected.

Re:Mislead by slashdot

[sholden]

The article was fine, that you didn't read it properly is your problem and not the author's. The first sentence (outside the summary) is:

Evans Data Corporation hired me to help out with a research report focused on Linux developers.

Which neatly states that the developers being talked about are Linux developers. Of course the slashdot writeup doesn't bother mentioning this, but such things are expected in what passes for summaries on slashdot.

Re:Mislead by slashdot

[DeadSea]

The original article triumphantly proclaimed that 40% of developers were focused on Linux, cleverly failing to mention that that 40% is among the subset of developers who develop for Linux... It's akin to saying that 99% of people are smokers...if you only include people with cigarettes in their pocket.

I think you have your analogy a little bit off, try this (added portions in bold again):

90% of people who smoke have a cigarette at least once a day.

A majority of Americans with at least a pound of metal in their pockets have at least $15.00 of change on them.

Most Texans who own a Ferrari make over $200,000 a year.

In each case, the stat was sensational (and wrong) with the omission.

Re:Mislead by slashdot

[ergo98]

Agreed. I'm not picking on Nicholas, or the article that he authored, but he summary that was given on Slashdot (which was precisely what the guy I was responding to was commenting upon).

Re:Mislead by slashdot

[J. J. Ramsey]

It appears they were collected properly, as long as you wanted to prove that "People who use Linux" == "People who use Linux"

You are ignoring that people who use Linux are not necessarily people who only use Linux. There is a difference between using both Linux and Windows but focusing more on Windows and using both Linux and Windows but focusing more on Linux.

Re:Mislead by slashdot

[sholden]

Sorry, I misinterpreted what "article" meant :)

Re:Mislead by slashdot

[dylan_-]

It appears they were collected properly, as long as you wanted to prove that "People who use Linux" == "People who use Linux"

I really don't understand this. How can you read what was written above and still completely and utterly fail to understand? Is there any point in trying to explain? Try "Developers who develop for Linux" == "Developers who used to develop for Windows, now develop for both, and are moving towards more Linux than Windows"

Re:Mislead by slashdot

[Apreche]

ooooooh, a ferrari.... aaaahhhhh. 360 spyder, car of dreams....

Re:Mislead by slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is the first line of the article on LinuxWorld:

"Evans Data Corporation hired me to help out with a research report focused on Linux developers."

IMO that's pretty clear.

-Nicholas Petreley (I have a user ID but if I had time to explain why I'm posting anonymously, I'd have time to find my password - grin)

Re:Mislead by slashdot

[Roadkills-R-Us]

Perhaps you need new glasses. It was obvious to me this was what the article was saying, even without the bold font. 8^)

Re:Mislead by slashdot

[DeadVulcan]

...it seems that Windows has such a high market share when 40% of developers who use Linux are focusing primarily on Linux.

Wait a minute. This is still incorrect.

Petreley was very precise in his wording. The conclusion was that 40% of developers currently using Linux used to use Windows.

It does not at all address overall market share! The question being answered was, "is Linux taking more market share, in an absolute sense, from Windows or from Unix?" If there were more people migrating to Windows, then Linux would be losing overall market share. But Petreley's conclusion would still stand.

From what I see, the previous Slashdot article completely misinterpreted the conclusion. It was not even close.

But then, I could be wrong, too.

Re:Mislead by slashdot

[UserAlreadyExists]

And furthermore, the average person has about 1 testicle and 1 breast.

Re:Mislead by slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

And those Windows users make up 99% of the made up statistics which are 1% of the truth...

Oh wait, what did I just say?

Why should Slashdotters believe Petreley?

[Zico]

Nobody here would believe the results of a study put together by Steve Ballmer casting Windows in a positive light, so why should anyone believe the results put together by one of the main rabidly anti-Windows voices which casts Windows in a negative light? Not too objective, there...

Re:Why should Slashdotters believe Petreley?

[FortKnox]

Actually, if you look back to the questions, I specifically asked this (basically asking if he was overly biased).

Of course it was neither asked nor answered. Take that into consideration and come to your own conclusions.

Re:Why should Slashdotters believe Petreley?

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the fricken post! Petreley didn't do the study!!! He is publicizing it because he is biased towards Linux, for sure, but he didn't personally undertake this study, some company named "Evans Data" did. I, for one, would like to know who paid for the study, because more often than not that is what can best be used to determine to what extent the study is flawed.

Re:Why should Slashdotters believe Petreley?

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks to me that Petreley went to great lengths to evaluate the results accurately. Don't just dismiss him out-of-hand without evaluating his methodology.

Re:Why should Slashdotters believe Petreley?

[manyoso]

Hey, why do you have to 'believe' anyone? Why don't you look at the evidence provided by both and consider the relevant context and decide for yourself what you think. Why must you have the truth fed to you and why do you refuse to think and make up your own mind?

Ballmer and Petreley are offering facts/opinions/conclusions and you have been given a brain to question and analyze these assertions. Use them.

Abandoning your inate ability to question and look at the world through your own eyes in favor of blindly 'trusting' whomever based on past precedent is not such a good strategy for getting through life.

It is almost certain that Ballmer *sometimes* tells the truth and I'd be very suprised if Petreley hasn't lied at some point to someone or other, so take this into account along with all the _evidence_ you can glean and see for yourself.

Re:Why should Slashdotters believe Petreley?

[Elwood P Dowd]

In what way does this study cast Linux in a positive light? It is a study of Linux users. Given that fact, what on Earth could we object to about this study? If there were a study showing that 100% of developers who only use Windows only develop for Windows... no one here would complain.

Re:Why should Slashdotters believe Petreley?

[goetz]

Why don't you look at the evidence provided by both and consider the relevant context and decide for yourself what you think.

Right. But the problem is, neither Petreley nor Evans Data provided the gory details from this "survey" or its methodology - just a few high-level numbers from the report to backup his claim. He said himself in the article:

It turns out there are so many jewels in the survey results that it's difficult to decide which ones to put on display here at LinuxWorld.

Mind sharing the wealth Nick? In fact, all of it? How do we validate or debunk a claim without the actual backbone from which it stems?

You can't expect to throw a big, unintuitive claim on a hot button issue to a group of intelligent and skeptical technicians, and expect them to go "do their math" on nothing! So naturally from a lack of much to look at or analyze, we start flaming and squabbling, because that's more fun, and plus we're pretty good at it (-;.

Re:Why should Slashdotters believe Petreley?

[Tony-A]

Interesting juxtaposition:
In other news, 79.5% of statistics are made up. And Slashdot is comprised of 72% Windows users. ... so why should anyone believe the results put together by one of the main rabidly anti-Windows voices which casts Windows in a negative light?

Because 72% of us use Windows?

Re:Why should Slashdotters believe Petreley?

[tmark]

why should anyone believe the results put together by one of the main rabidly anti-Windows voices which casts Windows in a negative light

People will often believe results and arguments without carefully scrutinizing the study, if these results somehow happen to coincide or reinforce their own world view. If you question whether or not that's happening at *this* website, you haven't been reading it long enough.

Re:Why should Slashdotters believe Petreley?

[carlos_benj]

If there were a study showing that 100% of developers who only use Windows only develop for Windows... no one here would complain.

You're new here, right?

Re:Why should Slashdotters believe Petreley?

[Malcontent]

You are missing the point entirely.

His point is that people develop for Linux switched from windows.

In other words Linux is eating into the Windows developer mindshare and that's a significant outcome (if his conclusion is true that is).

Re:Why should Slashdotters believe Petreley?

[Elwood P Dowd]

Either that, or his point is what he said it was:

To debunk the myth that Linux eats mostly Unix market share.

That is only a significant outcome because there was an existing myth. He exactly does not say that it is significant that Linux users are eating Windows marketshare.

Re:Why should Slashdotters believe Petreley?

[Malcontent]

"He exactly does not say that it is significant that Linux users are eating Windows marketshare."

No he is not. What he is saying is that of those people who switched to linux for development most switched from windows. This had nothing to do with users.

Flawed survey strategy?

[arpit]

" Evans Data sent out a survey to about 400 developers who are either known to have some involvement in Linux development, or work for companies that are involved in Linux development."

Shouldn't the survey have been sent out to 400 randomly chosen developers? Aren't you biasing the results already by choosing developers more likely to have some involvement with linux?

Re:Flawed survey strategy?

[TopShelf]

Because they were looking for trends and insights from the Linux developer community - and one of the questions was basically, "what platform did you come to Linux from?"

Re:Flawed survey strategy?

[diablobynight]

This confused me as well. their sending out a poll to find out how many developers, develop for linux as apposed to windows, and they send it to known linux developers. lol. That's like sending out a poll on how many people smoke cigarettes only to people who have purchased things with camel cash.

Re:Flawed survey strategy?

[redfenix]

By surveying only developers who currently use Linux to any extent, the survey focuses on a percentage of the whole developer population, effectively eliminating all developers who would summarily answer "no" to all questions.

To get statistics based on the entire developer population, one only needs to obtain the percentage of developers who use Linux to any extent and multiply all statistics against it.

Re:Flawed survey strategy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you even read the answers? The study focus was DEVELOPERS THAT USE LINUX AT LEAST SOME OF THE TIME.

Did the clue stick?

Sorry to be so inflammatory, but reading comprehension is a prereq for a propeller head.

Re:Flawed survey strategy?

[Mr Bill]

I have done some statistical analysis of the comments posted to slashdot articles in the past year and found that over 92.46% of all posters failed to read the article they were commenting on.

Re:Flawed survey strategy?

[jridley]

No. The purpose of the study was to find out which OS's Linux was taking market share away from in the developer space.

They were only interested in people or companies that were known to be using Linux. This was not a study to find out what percentage of developers are using Linux.

Re:Flawed survey strategy?

[carlos_benj]

No. The purpose of the study was to find out which OS's Linux was taking market share away from in the developer space.

I agree. Reading is a skill that is highly overrated. Why bother to read the author's comments regarding the purpose of the survey vs. the purpose of one question in the survey if it's going to skew the baseless conclusions we prefer.

Re:Flawed survey strategy?

[Minna Kirai]

This is a troll, right? How could anyone mod-up such an incorrect statistical manipulation?

To get statistics based on the entire developer population, one only needs to obtain the percentage of developers who use Linux to any extent and multiply all statistics against it.

Hmm, 97% of Catholic monks oppose war in Iraq. And they make up 0.0001% of the US population. So can we multiply those numbers to see if the US public supports the war?

(Hint: the opinions of a sample selected by any means other than total randomness can never be considered representative of the whole.)

Re:Flawed survey strategy?

[johnnyb]

No. If someone wanted to find out why people started smoking, who would they ask? Smokers!

Similarly, if someone wants to find out needs of Linux developers and what their background is, who would they ask? Linux developers!

Re:Flawed survey strategy?

[johnnyb]

"Shouldn't the survey have been sent out to 400 randomly chosen developers? "

No. It would have been just as useful to send it out to 400 random people roaming the street. The question was about behavior patterns and backgrounds of _Linux Developers_, therefore, Linux Developers, not the world at large nor developers in general, is the population.

However, it definitely should be random within the target population, but there is no information on data collection techniques to confirm or deny that.

Re:Flawed survey strategy?

[Esther Schindler]

Shouldn't the survey have been sent out to 400 randomly chosen developers? Aren't you biasing the results already by choosing developers more likely to have some involvement with linux?

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)

the key point

[jbellis]

Nick writes,

The 40% number does *not* mean that 40% of developers worldwide are focusing primarily on Linux, nor does Evans represent it that way. It means 40% of the [400] developers Evans surveyed, and those developers were pre-selected by their use of Linux.

The study itself seems sound. But, is this admittedly limited study sufficient justification for the prediction [from the original linuxworld article] that "In 2004, don't be surprised when Linux overtakes Windows to become the main focus for developers?"

In a word... no. The study only looked at developers who had already moved at least partway to linux. You are justified in drawing absolutely NO conclusions about how soon other developers may start making the same move! To do so is mere sensationalistic handwaving.

At some level, Nick realizes this:

Here is the question answered by the data: Among those developers who now focus primarily on Linux, which did more of them have as their primary focus beforehand -- Windows or Unix?

Unfortunately that doesn't seem to stop him from drawing further, unwarranted conclusions.

Re:the key point

[DJ FirBee]

Yup. Nick seems like a dork. He got pretty straightforward questions from us, and then he dispenses rhetoric with an abundance of prepositional phrases back to us.

If he really had anything he would come out and say it without a bazillion justifications and excuses.

As it stands now, he looks like a wanker and should be treated as such. I would much rather have a real semblance of the real position of linux. Maybe, I could find that somewhere online.

Re:the key point

[Anonymous Coward]

He probably meant the main focus of the developers relevant to the survey.

Re:the key point

[DJ FirBee]

See what I mean ?

Re:the key point

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the trend revealed by the data apparently indicates that by 2004, more than 50% of the developers in a similar sample would have migrated from developing for the Windows platform. Withou looking at the exact numbers much more would be hard to conclude.

One of the observations Petreley made in his answers was that most of the linux developers polled are developing server and web based apps. The conclusion would be that Linux is pulling application developers from the Windows market to develope server and client products in Windows. A blacker way to interpret this that MS is crowding out non-MS application development and these new jobless are migrating away from a saturated environment to one where they can survive. Note they not only are changing platforms,but target products as well.

Re:the key point

[Azureflare]

It's possible that the reason they said this was that the developers who had partially moved over to linux, did not develop *entirely* for linux. They still developed mostly for windows. But, in the *future* they planned to develop more for linux. This can be taken to mean "More developers in the future for linux applications" = "Main focus of THESE developers = linux".

These developers weren't only using linux. Linux was just a little dessert on the side. The developers want to make it the main course, and put windows in the dustbin =)

Re:the key point

[Moses Lawn]

In a word... no. The study only looked at developers who had already moved at least partway to linux. You are justified in drawing absolutely NO conclusions about how soon other developers may start making the same move! To do so is mere sensationalistic handwaving.


But that's the whole point of statistics, to look at past trends and attempt to predict the future based on them. If, for instance, the data show that over the last 4 years, Linux development has gone up 15% every year, then you are somewhat justified in predicting, all other things being equal, that Linux development next year will increase about the same amount.

That said, it's ridiculous to suggest that Linux will overtake Windows any time soon, especially based on this thin set of data. A better survey would be of 1000 server-side developers, asking "What platforms do you develop for now?", "What platforms did you develop for last year?" and "What platforms will you be developing for in the next 3 years?"

Re:the key point

[j_w_d]

I kind of doubt that Linux will overtake MS anytime soon on the desktop. That said, if apps developers are bailing out of Windows, to develope server stuff on Linux, perhaps the near future may see a MS vs. everyone else world. Rather like Apple used to be.

Re:the key point

[Anonymous Coward]

Objections such as yours made realize there are a whole lot of Windows developers on Slashdot. I haven't seen this many Win Panties in a knot since the Desktop Paradigm Wars of 2002.

What market penetration is?

[dark-br]

At what level of penetration (% install base share) will Linux reach critical mass on the desktop? It's much less relevant from a server perspective since it appears that Linux already has reached critical mass on that front.

I mean, really.

What are the primary means of assessing Linux usage statistics, and how reliable are these methods? Also, what types of methods are used to offset each method's failings?

Without knowing that how could us say that critical mass has been reached?

Re:What market penetration is?

[digitalhermit]

My neighborhood has a very high percentage of Linux computers. On my street fully half the machines are running Linux.

(fine print: 12 houses on the street. Of the approximately 30 machines on the street at least 14 of them are running some brand of Linux). Well, OK, I have all 14, but that doesn't change the truth.

Re:What market penetration is?

[Anonymous Coward]

At a market share of 5 to 10% it becomes financially interesting for software companies to port software to Linux. About 5 to 10% of a decently written program has to be recoded (and tested) to adapt it to a new operating system.
Off course this assumes that the competition on both operating systems is comparable. Trolltech (Qt) has a huge market share under Linux because there was very little competition when they entered the Linux market, while under Windows they had to compete with MSVS and Borland.

Peter

Re:What market penetration is?

[molarmass192]

I think it's impossible to measure it objectively. I purchase one copy of SuSE at each release but I install that same copy on 9 separate boxes. 3 are mine but the other 6 are for other people who asked me to manage their PCs. So trying to use SuSEs sales figure to determine my install base would make no sense. Short of random end user polls (ie. a telephone / mail survey) or data extrapolation (I guess surveys do this too), I don't know how in the heck a true installed base could be determined. If you want to try an interesting experiment, buy a shirt with a big Tux on it from www.thinkgeek.com and go for a walk. The amount of people that will stop you to talk Linux is almost beyond belief. I assume the same thing might be true of a Mac t-shirt but it's really a strange feeling.

Re:What market penetration is?

[BigBir3d]

The same goes for Windows 98...

Surveys always answer questions. Problem is they usually create more than they answer.

Re:What market penetration is?

[Zathrus]

Well, it does change the truth... 14 is not "fully half of" 30.

Your point is well made though - there are lies, damned lies, and statistics. If you don't know how the survey was made (including the questions asked), the survey population, and (possibly) some of the raw data, then the statistics coming out of it is nearly useless.

Although I'd say the main cause of poor data here was the /. blurb. The article had issues too, but the /. summary was, well, crap.

Re:What market penetration is?

[bheerssen]

Wow, should I be flattered or insulted that somebody copied my question word for word?

At any rate, I still wish the question had been asked. Although Nick delved deeply into the methods use for the study cited, he said nothing about wider statistics usage and methods. That is something I would have liked to hear from him, especially the point about the various websites devoted to these things.

Won't be mainstream until

[brad-x]

People start realizing that 'the feature/bug will be fixed when I get to it' is unacceptable for the corporate environment (in which Windows thrives), ease of use is made a priority, and the practical needs of small to midsized businesses are met by Linux.

This weekend I was involved in the installation of a Windows 2000 AD configuration for a medium sized business at two locations in this city; their needs and their budget could have been met for thousands of dollars less had Linux been able to support an NT domain with simple graphical utilities.

For all RedHat's work creating their new product line, not one of their efforts has even FOCUSED on the massive number of Windows 9x client workstations that simply need a Microsoft Windows domain and drive shares.

So quit buzzwording, clustering, XMLifying everything, and create something someone NEEDS.

Re:Won't be mainstream until

[Blaine Hilton]

I have been in this "bind" before when a client wanted to use some biometric solutions. However I could not find any solutions, I found one company that would custom code it for about $20k, but other then that all the drivers, and support was for the windows platform. So because of this I was stuck to devloping a MS solution.

Re:Won't be mainstream until

[mark_lybarger]

the trouble is that most people claim they need a clustered XMLifyed dancing singing application server. when you try to find out what they really need from a business perspective and then try to offer something different than a clustered XMLifyed dancing singing application server you find your proposal in the file 13.

Re:Won't be mainstream until

[WNight]

Who needs that? I certainly don't.

But, if you do, you might want to drop a bit of the money you made on your recent job as a donation to the Samba group, or whoever else would be working on something like this. It'll pay off in the end when you can offer the same services at the same price but not have to pay software costs out of it.

And if you don't need it enough to pay for it, I question how much you need it.

Re:Won't be mainstream until

[Anonymous Coward]

At some point, those thousands of dollars can hire someone to write the graphical utilities, or an admin capable of typing on a console. If the business' strategy is to wish for an unpaid hobbyist to hand them the tools for free, they deserve to be locked in with Windows... and get eaten by the first competitor to beat them on the bottom line.

Re:Won't be mainstream until

[Anonymous Coward]

What a load of shit. Samba and SWAT, do some research you moderating lemmings.

If William Shatner had done this interview...

[Jon Abbott]

Now let's imagine what it would have been like if William Shatner had done this interview...

1) So that 40% number...
by Anonymous Coward

...the one where 40% of developers are writing mainly to Linux. Where does that stat come from, and what does "developers" mean? It sounds really nice, but if it were true I as a Linux user would expect to see a lot more apps. Does it come from Sourceforge numbers? Does it come from a poll at a website; maybe a Slashdot, Kuro5hin or Newsforge poll? Is it of *all* developers, or of *paid* developers, or of developers of open-source developers or in-house developers or developers of commercial software? Does it include platform-agnostic developers (ie. Java/ perl/ ASP/ PHP/ .NET)? If so, which side does it put them on? Also, what is the error margin of the poll?

I know a bit about statistics, and more about Linux, and something smells fishy. Linux is good, so I figure the numbers are bad.

Shatner:

I don't know. Oh, and get a life.

Still on dodgy ground

[realnowhereman]

It means 40% of the developers Evans surveyed, and those developers were pre-selected by their use of Linux.

The question was - is Linux taking more market share away from Unix or Windows. In what way does asking people who already use Linux answer that question?

The correct people to ask where the Unix developers and the Windows developers. Presumably as we are talking Unix we are only interested in enterprise apps so we only ask the Windows users who work in the enterprise. Then we ask an equal quantity of both. Now we've got some statistics we can use to answer one very simple question.

We could look at the trend over the last two years - let's go and ask all the Linux developers who only became Linux developers last year. Ask them what platform they used two years ago.

There are plenty of questions that can be asked that would tell us something; so why did Evans waste all that effort finding out nothing?

It sounds to me like they need to get someone who's a bit more rigorous with their statistics in future. Get a statistician in here and give them a laugh. None of these figures are either meaningful or conclusive.

Re:Still on dodgy ground

[Chris Burke]

The question was - is Linux taking more market share away from Unix or Windows. In what way does asking people who already use Linux answer that question?

Um... Directly?

Who else would you ask to find out where people are moving to Linux from? In order to answer the question "where did you move to Linux from", they have to already have moved to Linux, no?

I really can't see what your question is. You want to know if people are moving to Linux from Unix or from Windows. So you ask people who moved to Linux if they moved from Unix or Windows. Sounds pretty simple to me.

You could ask people who curretly use Unix or Windows what they plan to do, but that's only useful for future projections, not for seeing the source of current market share shifts. You don't find out how many people are doctors by surveying high school students on their future plans, do you?

Re:Still on dodgy ground

[Minna Kirai]

Who else would you ask to find out where people are moving to Linux from?

But that's not the question. The right question isn't "Where did current Linux developers come from?", but "Where did old Windows & Unix developers go?"

If you don't ask the latter question, you're not justified in reaching the conclusions the study claims.

You want to know if people are moving to Linux from Unix or from Windows.

That's not what "taking developer marketshare" means. "Share" means percentage of total, not an absolute number.

Suppose in 1993 Unix had 10% share and Microsoft 90%, and that today Linux has 10%. If you find, as the survey did, that 60% of Linux devs came from Windows, and 30% from Unix, that means Unix & Windows now have (approx) 7% & 84%, respectively. Meaning Unix has lost 30% of its developers, but Microsoft is down just 7%.

At that rate, Linux will kill all other Unices before Microsoft is really harmed. (That's the natural result of the survey- but, it doesn't have enough datapoints to really predict much of anything)

There are more factors- for instance, there is no "conservation of developers law"- old Unix devs can simply be fired and not respond to any surveys, but they should still count as "lost market". I wrote another comment on the situation.

Re:Still on dodgy ground

[carlos_benj]

The question was - is Linux taking more market share away from Unix or Windows. In what way does asking people who already use Linux answer that question?

The correct people to ask where the Unix developers and the Windows developers.

So, if someone wanted to know where residents who had recently moved to Phoenix came from they should ask people residing in Phoenix and an equal number of people residing in Dallas?

So, how long have you lived in Phoenix?

Ummm. I live in Dallas.

Really? Where did you live before you moved to Phoenix?

Ummm. I live in Dallas.

Re:Still on dodgy ground

[realnowhereman]

Erm, no... The study was asking developers what they would be using next year, so asking people who aren't using Linux now was kind of the point.

To use your example, to find out which people are planning to move to Phoenix you wouldn't bother asking people who had already moved to Phoenix.

Re:Still on dodgy ground

[realnowhereman]

The survey was asking people what they will be using next year. There is a point in asking students their future plans if the question is "what do you plan to do"

Re:Still on dodgy ground

[carlos_benj]

Erm, no... The study was asking developers what they would be using next year, so asking people who aren't using Linux now was kind of the point.

Perhaps you missed my witty reply about the relative inablility of some on slashdot to read with comprehension....

Here's a spoon-fed portion for your enjoyment taken from the answers in the interview:

First, the purpose of the Evans report was to uncover trends, needs, desires, opinions, and decisions among developers who use Linux at least part of the time. One does not ask developers who never use Linux for this information.

This survey might be of interest.

[FreeLinux]

Some folks will likely find this survey of interest.

www.linuxsurveys.com

You are right, but Slashdotters dont listen.

[LibertineR]

In a decade, Java will be about as popular as Fortran. I very much applaud your efforts on Mono.

.NET is rapidly gaining acceptance, and I believe that Microsoft will stick with you in support of what you are doing. Dont apologize for squat, most of these folks here are going to be cursing you until they realize just what you have done, and by then it will be too late for them, and they will be behind the curve.

Re:You are right, but Slashdotters dont listen.

[Anonymous Coward]

What, the troller gets trolled? Inconceivable!!

Re:Whats the point?

[monkeyboy87]

call this a troll or a flaim bait, but this is pretty accurrate. the population of users running a commercial unix on a desktop has pretty much dried up. Notice everyone talks about servers and never about their workstations anymore?

Again with the funny questions

[tdvaughan]

What's the point? "+5, Funny" serve their purpose on the thread where questions are asked. They're a waste of space when they're actually sent to the answerer.

Re:do not underestimate the power of mono

[CrazyLegs]

Interesting perspective... However, those swelling ranks of .NET developers are typically just Windows developers moving on to the 'next big idea' from MS (as OLE begat Activex which begat DNA which begat .NET which begat ???).

I do not believe that .NET is adding too much to the current Windows developer-base. Were I to be developing Windows apps today in ASP or an old release of VB, then .NET would look pretty attractive to me in terms of functionality uplifts, etc.

However, if I'm a developer working in Java or something else, there's no compelling reason I've seen to move on to .NET (this has been my personal experience).

IMHO, the biggest threats to Linux survival are the lack of standard desktop GUI, a lack of 3rd-party apps, a lack of 3rd-party support (getting better here), and the lack of consumer configs (Lindows is a total brain-cramp).

Picture of girl is propaganda

[Anonymous Coward]

That picture was taken during Iraq/Iran conflict, not this war. Stop spreading propaganda.

Christian Science oxymoron

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only is your post off-topic, but you link to an oxymoronic site.

Re:Christian Science oxymoron

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose you think that Einstein wasn't a scientist?

In a nutshell....

[DG]

(Obligatory Austin Powers "nutshell" joke deleted to save space)

1) A research company did a survey of commercial Linux developers with the aim of learning more about them.

2) They gave the data they collected to Nick, to see if he could glean anything interesting from the data.

3) Nick discovered that, of the commercial Linux developers surveyed:

a) 40% considered Linux to be their "primary focus"

b) Of these 40%, more of them switched their "primary focus" from Windows than from a flavour of UNIX

3) From this, Nick concludes that Linux is stealing more development share from Windows than from UNIX derivatives - which makes inuative sense, because there are a lot more Windows developers out there to steal share from.

4) Nick is satisfied that the research company was doing good science in their survey, rather than trying to spin him.

My own analysis agrees with his conclusions.

It is an interesting conclusion, because, given the API simularity between UNIXen and Linux, one might expect that the majority of commercial Linux developers would have been UNIX developers who ported their product over to Linux, but this seems to not be the case. Developers are in fact "defecting" from Windows to Linux.

What isn't addressed is the reason for the "defection". I for one would not be suprised that the prime motivator was Microsoft eating their lunch - not much point producing a product if M$ baked it into Windows....

DG

Re:In a nutshell....

[mfifer]

What isn't addressed is the reason for the "defection".

Simple. You fish where the fish is...

Re:In a nutshell....

[donnz]

What isn't addressed is the reason for the "defection". I for one would not be suprised that the prime motivator was Microsoft eating their lunch - not much point producing a product if M$ baked it into Windows....

Whilst we have always had a core Linux group the reason all our developers, and even management, are now able to (and do) chose Linux is the internet. All our new client development is based on delivering user interfaces over a browser. Suddenly we don't need to worry about desk tops, client server archtecture, APIs ODBC crap crap crap.

As I say to my clients, we are able to truely stand on giants shoulders...

no and no

[Xtifr]

Shouldn't the survey have been sent out to 400 randomly chosen developers?

No, it was a survey of Linux developers. Sending it to randomly chosen developers would be like trying to find out what women think by asking men! (Or by asking slashdot.) :)

What happened to the other 60%?

[Yankovic]

I don't mean to be naive, but everyone seems to be focusing on the minority of devs who moved from Windows. I agree that percentage wise, it's interesting that a lot of devs who now focus on Linux used to focus on Windows. But the majority used to focus on Unix! Let's use some examples:

1995: 100 of devs in the world
5 Unix
5 Other
90 Windows

2002: 110 devs in the world
2 Unix
5 Linux
3 Other
100 Windows

If 2 of the devs who used to focus on Windows moved to Linux, and 3 of the devs who used to focus on Unix moved to Linux, this would give you the numbers you see there.

But still the Windows dev market grew AND this was a very small amount! Lies, damn lies and statistics.

Re:What happened to the other 60%?

[dylan_-]

I agree that percentage wise, it's interesting that a lot of devs who now focus on Linux used to focus on Windows. But the majority used to focus on Unix!

No, they didn't. The 40% figure isn't what anyone used to do, it's...oh, I can't be bothered....I don't think I've ever read through a comments section where so many people so obviously didn't bother reading either the original article or the interview. Why did you bother posting at all?

Re:What happened to the other 60%?

[Anonymous Coward]

But..but...but.... it's an article uncomplimentary to Windows!!! We must post, so that the universe can be made right once more... to be intoned in a drugged, mechanical manner.

Re:do not underestimate the power of mono

[mark_lybarger]

that's quite a speculation. as someone from that java community, i'd personally speculate that a decade from now everyone will be writing to the javaX platform and all their applications will run on any platform that provides a JVM. .NET development is expensive for most corporations to give it a second glance. the software tools for developers are expensive and license plagued. the entire java platform has a very low cost to entry. there are high quality free development tools available for many platforms (eclipse, netbeans). these products rival Borland's Jbuilder and other java development tools. there's also tons of opensource tools available for just about any job in this relm.

are there big applications such as quicken or even MS Office who have dedicated to making their products for the .NET platform? will we be able to run MS Office / Outlook on a linux platform?

linux can and will survive with quality software that is easy to configure and use. from a desktop perspective, both kde and gnome provide that. from a server standpoint, well linux is being used a lot for servers in budget datacenters. those that actually have a budget are running solaris, HP-UX, VMS, and plenty of other platforms that meet the business need.

Does it bother you...

[sharkey]

To be interviewed by a "news" site where the "editors" can't even be bothered with spelling your name correctly?

Mar 24 2003

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut up:
Mar 24 2003

This is NOT Miguel de Icaza !!!

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Moderators, take note: parent is not Miguel de Icaza from Ximian!

The real Miguel is /. user # 7116!. Compare recent posts from both users to see it.

Please mod parent down as a troll or something.

Microsoft reason

[termos]

The reason Microsoft has such a large market share is because most PCs are shipped with Windows, most people don't uninstall it, and those who does are not really recorded as non-windows users. I think this is about to change, main reason is that computer vendors starts more and more to sell their machines with free operating systems, mainly to lower the price i guess. Dell at least tried with freedos, but i think Microsoft bought them back. I know still that Zepto sells their laptops with Linux if you don't want Windows (norwegian webpage btw.).

Netscape...

[Luke-Jr]

The replies suggest that Netscape lost because IE was free as in beer while in fact Netscape was freeware before Internet Explorer. That almost forced Microsoft to make IE freeware and then they decided they could bundle it with Windows to kill Netscape.

Re:Netscape...

[geekoid]

not true.
MS started giving away I.E while netscape was still sitting on store shelves for 20 bucks.
IIRC Netscape had two version , Silver and Gold.

Re:Netscape...

[Anonymous Coward]

not true.
MS started giving away I.E while netscape was still sitting on store shelves for 20 bucks.
IIRC Netscape had two version , Silver and Gold

Actually, according to "Weaving the Web" by Tim Berners-Lee, page 83,

Leveraging Marc's skills, NCSA pushed Mosaic hard, from being a great idea seen in Viola to a must-have product that was going to be on every desktop. Andreessen and Clark set out aggresively to conquer the entire market. To do so they used an unprecedented marketing policy: They released their product for free, so it would be picked up widely and quickly; all someone had to do was download it from the Internet.

I've added the bold for emphasis. Then on page 108:

Two weeks after Netscape's IPO, Microsoft released Windows 95, and with it Microsoft's browser, Internet Explorer....The first version of Internet Explorer had very little functionality. I could tell it was put together in a hurry, but it got Microsoft's toe in the water.

Therefore Netscape was releasing its browsers for free long before Microsoft did. Historically, of course, Mosaic had also been given out for free, as had been Viola (developed by UC Berkeley undergraduate Pei Wei), and the original grand-daddy-of-all-browsers by Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web. Berners-Lee's browser was written on the less-than-widely-available Next computer, so the source was not that valuable.

Internet Explorer is actually licensed from the original Mosaic organization, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIC); if you have an IE browser, look under the menu item "Help: About Internet Explorer" and read the info in the dialog box:

Based on NCSA Mosaic. NCSA Mosaic(TM); was developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Distributed under a licensing agreement with Spyglass, Inc.

In fact, if Netscape had originally licensed the code from UIC, Netscape would not have had to rewrite its browser code, and Spyglass (the licensing spin-off of UIC) could possibly have been less willing to license its code to Microsoft for an affordable price. As it happened, I think what the Netscape people did probably annoyed UIC greatly, because Netscape wasn't going to share its profits with them. Internet Explorer was the result.

Anyhow, I think these quotes might show that Luke-Jr. was probably correct in his original post.

Re:do not underestimate the power of mono

[Miguel de Icaza]

actually i agree with you, parent post was just a joke :^)

i keep coming back to java and its just getting better and better, CPUs are at the point where the VM hit is negligible and java is looking really mature, with tremendous enterprise buy-in and a huge open source community (jboss,appache,elipse,netbeans,jedit plugins etc.) also those java phones look like a lot of fun to program for...

BTW ever wondered what Miguel de Icaza's favourite java game is? its here:

http://www.dnainternet.fi/pelit/english/

IMO the mono cohorts are woefully naive :)

Aint gonna happen.

[LibertineR]

First, how long are those Win9x clients going to be around after Microsoft drops support for them shortly? Then, when those folks are running either Win2K or XP workstations; just how many of them do you expect to be satified with domain services only, and not a full-blown directory service?

I dont think you are suggesting that RedHat start working on a Linux Directory, are you? They would be CRAZY to make such an attempt, because they would NEVER recoup the cost of the effort for it. Hell, even a NT Domain support would be cost-prohibitive.

In short, dont hold your breath.

Re:Aint gonna happen.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that Win9x support will be around a lot longer than the six months- one year support provided by Redhat.

Re:Aint gonna happen.

[brad-x]

No one is going to switch away from Windows 9x just because it's no longer supported. It does what everyone requires of it at little additional cost.

Purchasing a site license for 200 copies of Windows XP Professional edition is simply not cost effective and won't be planned as an upgrade path for a LONG time. That gives Linux time to be an upgrade path as domain server for these clients.

Lots of time, in fact.

Re:Aint gonna happen.

[teeker]

First, how long are those Win9x clients going to be around after Microsoft drops support for them shortly?

Well, I run a shop with around 200 workstations, mostly Win98. Our technology needs have not substantially changed, and I fully intend to run those Win98 boxes in their current configuration until they all sputter and die. I can make no cost justification to upgrade them otherwise. What have those machines stopped doing that they did 4 years ago? Nothing. Hence, they stay as they are until business demands change.

Then, when those folks are running either Win2K or XP workstations; just how many of them do you expect to be satified with domain services only, and not a full-blown directory service?

Me. I don't have 20 offices in 10 countries around the world. My network has 3 locations that are well connected to each other, and I have no need for anything more complex than NT domain services. In fact, I will go out of my way to avoid such complications until our growth warrants. Until then, anything more complicated is a waste of my time. If I could get Linux servers to talk to machines on my NT domain seamlessly, especially for authentication purposes without trying to keep multiple accounts synchronized (and without trying to become the PDC), I would find much greater use for it.

Until it meshes with what I've got in an easy way, it stays as a web server for me, nothing more. Many will say that I just need to spend the time installing and configuring it properly, but if that takes me a week, I could have just bought the Win2k server license and been done with it. Unfortunately that's the reality.

All IMHO, of course...

Re:Aint gonna happen.

[Trepalium]

RedHat could do a Linux Directory fairly easily. Most of the low level servers for such a service already exist. OpenLDAP exists and is used by many people, and can plug quite nicely into Samba. The missing parts are mostly convenience related -- admin tools, set-up wizards, etc.

Re:Aint gonna happen.

[natmsincome.com]

There are a couple of Projects/Technologies you might like to know about:

PAM(Password Authenication Module): In Linux you can tel it what to use for authenication. You can use the file in etc, NIS(Sun), LDAP, SMB(A windows Domain) In Red Hat 8 all you have to do is point it to the server :-)

Samba:Samba Can be used as a File server and can currently be a Domain Controlor or a Member but not a Backup Contorlor. Samba 3 is currently in the works and will be more compatable with Windows 2000 as the Current Series of Samba 2 are more like NT 4.0
http://www.linuxworld.com/linuxworld/lw-1998- 10/lw -10-samba-p5.html

Webmin/SWAT: Swat is a GUI for Samba. Webmin does more than that as it is a gui for almost all of the servers in Linux.
http://www.webmin.net

Enjoy

Nathaniel Brown

Re:Aint gonna happen.

[teeker]

All of these are products worthy of mention, of course, and I have seen them all (not all in depth, unfortunately). Perhaps the problem is really that of distribution... I've read the Winbind FAQ on the Samba site on how NSS can look to Samba and how PAM can redirect authentication to many different kinds of sources, but the problem is that they are so difficult (which makes it time consuming for non-pros) to set up, it's not worth it for me.

The difference in time that it takes for me to set up a w2k server versus a Linux server (for a particular purpose and integrated into our NT based network) pays for the w2k license and then some...and because we're already a MS shop, the CALs for w2k are already paid for. I hate the situation, but I don't have free time to spend fixing it.

A company who releases a distribution made to fit well in corporate MS-based networks could be rich. I imagine there are plenty of people like me who are not really happy with their MS products and are quite keen to get something else in the door but just don't have the time and resources to make it happen.

Now Webmin, that is the first thing I install on any Linux box and I can't recommend it highly enough to anybody who is starting out with a small Linux server...

The other side of the coin

[Slime-dogg]

He didn't survey Windows developers, which is a problem. Yes, they don't use Linux, but they may have at one point in time. You see, the author is operating on the assumption that once you go Linux, you stay Linux. He doesn't understand that everything is just a tool for our use, and we'll choose the best tool for the job (and typically the most cost-efficient.)

What he should have done is send 400 surveys to each of UNIX, Windows, and Linux developers to see what OS they used to run. That way, he'd be able to accurately determine if Linux is the blackhole of development platforms, or if Windows is taking market share from both UNIX and Linux

I know that the company I work for used to run Novell and TurboLinux (I think), but now is an all Windows environment. My boss hired this Network Admin who was a MS zealot, and the first thing she did when she came in the building was take down those Linux servers. She couldn't stand them, not because of their supposed "difficulty," but mostly because she took some MS classes, and had no clue what UNIX was.

As a result, we have developers here that had to switch from a Linux dev environment to a MS one.

Re:The other side of the coin

[jedidiah]

This was a survey of software developers, not corporate IT departments.

Re:The other side of the coin

[Slime-dogg]

The company I work for happens to do all development in-house. We have an IT department that probably codes more than some software companies. Some of our software is licensed out to other companies, with some of my co-workers providing consulting on it.

Our business is out to make money, and selling software and services is just another way to do so, though it may not be what the company is acually based on.

I'd say that our actual IT department is about half the size of the actual IT/development department.

very few votes...

[redfenix]

2 Total Votes

I just shifted the poll results by 50%!

MUHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Re:Didn't you mean...

[magickalhack]

Don't you sometimes wish there was an option for -1 Stupid? ;-)

Re:NOT MIGUEL DE ICAZA - TRUE

[GroundBounce]

This definitely seems to be a troll (and an overactive one the last few days).

If you search Slashdot users for "miguel", several listings come up. The one that appears to be the real Miguel is this one . The ID is 7116. This listing also point to what more likely seems to be Miguel's true home page.

Moron

[gr8_phk]

In response to question #4 he says "I don't know of any good measure of growth rates." I think market share is a good one in an established or saturated market. His claim is about market share, yet he gives NO numbers for anyones market share. If there are 100K Unix developers and 1M Windows developers and I get 20K converts from each of these segments, who lost more? Unix lost 20 percent (of it's market share), while Windows lost 2 percent (of it's market share), yet this ButtNugget thinks the 50% ratio over in the Linux world means the 2 OSes are losing equally. If that trend continues, which OS will have zero developers first?

I'd bet there are far more Windows developers than Unix, so his data suggest that Unix will lose to Linux before Windows - exactly opposite what his conclusion seems to indicate.

Re:Moron

[johnnyb]

I think market share is a good one in an established or saturated market.

***

Not if market share can vary based on the products ability to handle load. "We needed 10 Windows boxes for this project, Linux handled it with 1, I guess Windows is 10 times more popular than Linux!"

Your other points were excellent.

WTF ?

[tmark]

Evans Data sent out a survey to about 400 developers who are either known to have some involvement in Linux development, or work for companies that are involved in Linux development.

You mean the controversial 40% statistic means that 40% of such developers work primarily for Linux ? Isn't the flipside of this supposedly rosy story that 60% of programmers working in such companies are presumably NOT developing for Linux ? Hot damn, if this isn't a case of picking your sample to suit your theory, I don't know what is. I can just IMAGINE the vitriole that would be directed at a study reporting that, say, "a significant number of developers at companies developing applications for Windows are primarily developing for Windows."

Re:I know it's off topic ...

[Anonymous Coward]

It says it needs flash. Is that RMS-approved ? Will I be selling my soul if I d/l the plugin ?

Not entirely useless

[0x0d0a]

That's still interesting, though your criticism is *excellent* -- currently, most of them focus primarily on Windows. Next year, assuming the survey is accurate, most of them focus primarily on Linux.

We can probably say something along the lines of "people that start using Linux tend to move towards focusing primarily on Linux".

That's a good sign, since Linux tends to creep into companies, rather than enter in a massive changeover. Lots of people are interested in adding Linux support to their products -- considerably fewer are interested in suddenly dropping their existing platform.

Yeah, but...

[Tailhook]

I know of a magazine that quoted endlessly (years ago) that OS/2 was a dead-end operating system because it only had 2,000 native applications. Later, the same magazine published a story about how Windows NT was gaining good momentum, as evidenced by its 1,200 native applications.

While this may seem insightful when he quotes this "magazine", it appears that it was dead-on, many "years ago." Despite the stipulated fact that OS/2 had many more applications, it was clear then that NT had the future.

All I know is that in my shop Linux has become a good thing. It wasn't until recently. You no longer fear FUDish looks if you suggest that something could be done better, if not at least cheaper, on Linux. Linux compatibility has become a key criteria for hardware acquisition. This is from a site that had never had any form of non-Microsoft. This change is in part due to recent turn-over in IT staff. Indirectly, it has also happened because people in the IT sector are talking about Linux frequently in terms of real implementations, especially on resumes. Executives are noticing.

For us, Linux adoption is motivated by three things in no particular order; manageability, reliability and cost. Manageability means not having to cope with immature, half baked, complex GUI only service software for email, http, filesystems, backups, periodic jobs, etc. To us, reliability means not having to put up with the random, mysterious nonsense (crashes, hangs, corruption, security holes, etc.) that we witness daily with Microsoft products that aren't nursed constantly with patches and rebuilds. Cost is a given, provided the necessary talent exists. Such talent is now criteria for hiring.

It is also clear to me that Linux is claiming enormous mind share. Sourceforge et al wouldn't exist otherwise. I think that mind share is the key because it means the market has found something credible. I mean found in the sense of judged, as opposed to discovered. Linux has moved beyond geeks, hobbyists and isolated vertical markets. I think the credit belongs, in part, to those same geeks and hobbyists.

I am no zealot. Linux works well for a subset of the things I'm expected to do. It is not a universal solution for all problems. Fortunately, there does appear to be room in the future IT market for multiple platforms. As long as that's the case, Linux has time to progress.

Re:Yeah, but...

[leomekenkamp]

While this may seem insightful when he quotes this "magazine", it appears that it was dead-on, many "years ago." Despite the stipulated fact that OS/2 had many more applications, it was clear then that NT had the future.

I think the point he was trying to make is that statistics are abused. It does not matter if their end result was correct, their reasoning was terribly flawed. To me this is very insightful.

Re:Yeah, but...

[Arandir]

The magazine in question was PC World. Most MIS managers based their purchasing decisions off of what PC World recommended. Many IT managers still do. Now consider that PC World spent half a decade shouting that OS/2 was dying. It's no wonder OS/2 died. After all, Microsoft owned the PC press in the '90s.

I remember one head-to-head comparison/review of OS/2 versus NT. OS/2 kicked NT's butt from here to the moon. The review was glowing. Then in the last paragraph it recommended the purchase of NT.

let's do like riaa do...

[zozzi]

Some more extrapolated stats (hey the RIAA can do it so we can do it too):

Yesterday 5 SuSe packages were sold. Since there is no additional cost to install other copies, one can say that this is equivalent to having 5/0 PCs running Linux.

This means that Linux is installed an infinite number of times more than Windows. Wohoo!

Phones are the future of computing?

[LibertineR]

I'm speechless. I cant muster a reply to such a stupid statement.

Niche markets will take longer

[GroundBounce]

Unfortunately, applications which are in niche markets will be last to migrate. For applications where the absolute number of users is fairly small, the 2-3% market share of Linux translates to a potential number of users that is too small to support for a traditional commercial software company.

There are exceptions, of course. The Film industry, for example has been opting for Linux, and as a result, a lot of traditionally "nichey" software has been ported to Linux.

Handy links for further information

[dylan_-]

It seems many people are a bit confused about what exactly all this means. I suggest you read this and then have a read through this page and it should become a lot clearer...

Don't make me laugh

[Anonymous Coward]

It's taking mabie 1/10th 1% of the windows market.
Linux is a crappy OS for anything that people want to do something real with.

Strong-armed to use MS-Windows

[Kevin Burtch]

I used to work for a very large corporation who's policy towards Linux was "don't even bring it up"... they were quite hostile against using it for servers or desktops.
This same company, during the same timeframe (and still, now) USED Linux in some of their cell-phone products!
Just because a company develops for Linux, does not mean they actually use it on their desktops or servers.

Another company I've worked for is mostly Unix admins, and they are also completely against using Linux on company hardware, and _require_ that you use MS-Windows to support Unix systems!
Anyone even vaguely familiar with Unix knows that supporting Unix systems via an MS-Windows desktop is quite a hobbling and inefficient experience.

In both cases, it was management/politics that dictated the use of MS-Windows.
No valid reasons were _ever_ given for these decisions, even though very strong arguements for using Linux was provided and presented.

Don't assume just because a company develops for, or supports Unix/Linux that they allow it's use on servers or desktops.

(s core: +1, stupid)

[Anonymous Coward]

No.

Everything posted here is pretty idiotic.
At least the trolls are occasionally amusing.

X as a server

[rxed]

The main problem with OS X _server_ (that I see anyways) is the Aqua GUI. It sure looks good but do you need so many resources tied to a _server_ GUI?

heh

[koekepeer]

[quote]
Statistics are reliable as long as you collect them properly.
[/quote]

oooh the guy collects statistics... and that's supposed to make them more reliable? i would say it only makes them more numerous.

oh, he meant data... :->

Linux is history

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux - sucks

Question 5, Score 5

[DoNotTauntHappyFunBa]

It was interesting to me that question #5 made it through final editing, and the "straight" answer was definitely worth a chuckle.

Re:I know it's off topic ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, thanks! It is indeed an excellent map.

My survey

[Tomster]

The Evans survey doesn't prove Linux is taking more market share from Unix than Windows. It only proves that of *existing* Linux developers, more than 50% came from a Windows background. Which ought to be no surprise to anyone, as for every Unix developer there are about fifteen bajillion Windows developers. (Remember kids, anyone who's ever put together a VBA script is a Windows developer!)

What I want to ask IT managers and CIO's is the following:

My organization's usage of Linux over the past year has:
o Increased
o Decreased
o Stayed about the same

I expect my organization's usage of Linux over the next year to:
o Increase
o Decrease
o Stay about the same

In the past year, my organization has (check all that apply):
o Moved some functionality from Windows to Linux
o Moved some functionality from Unix to Linux
o Moved some functionality from Linux to Windows
o Moved some functionality from Linux to Unix
o Created new applications on Windows
o Created new applications on Unix (non-Linux)
o Created new applications on Linux

In the next year, I expect my organization to (check all that apply):
o Move some functionality from Windows to Linux
o Move some functionality from Unix to Linux
o Move some functionality from Linux to Windows
o Move some functionality from Linux to Unix
o Create new applications on Windows
o Create new applications on Unix (non-Linux)
o Create new applications on Linux

It was asked. It was answered.

[IPFreely]

Question 2) Differences

Go read it again. (or for the first time, depending...)

flawed survey

[kLaNk]

Ok, so they blatantly say:

2. Evans surveyed only those companies that are involved in Linux development.

And THEN they say that they are surprised because, out of the 400 developers that they talked to, a high percentage of them were focusing on linux development? What the hell?

I think that I am going ot go interview 400 "adult" actresses and then publish my surprising results of how more and more people want to have sex in front of a camera for money!

Re:do not underestimate the power of mono

[gandy909]

I still prefer, right or wrong, to wait that one out, as I have the sinking feeling MS is waiting for a critical mass and will then start shouting ".net is patented"...

The real reason

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux does not play many modern games so you lose the gamer crowd. Linux GUI is more fragmented where windows is more unified. Windows has MS office and millions of other apps where linux does not. Windows can be better managed from the GUI where linux is more command line. Exe extensions installs files where in linux you have rpms and other methods to install programs it is just to fragmented.

There are alot more reasons then this. Just cause manufactors ship with windows is not a good excuse cause if they shipped PC with linux most people would learn how to uninstall it and put windows on for the reasons above. When linux gets as easy as windows to use people will use it.

Following your example...

[redfenix]

Well, using what I stated with your example would end up with the following: .97 * 0.0001 = 0.000097%

Which would mean that 0.000097% of the US population consists of Catholic monks who oppose war in Iraq.

See?

Re:Following your example...

[Minna Kirai]

That observation would be specific, valid, and useless.

The survey is reaching a conclusion that is general, invalid, and useful (except for being wrong).

Re:The difference

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, that "gassed his own people" thing?

Just because the US was giving him aid in order to play Iraq off against Iran, we are somehow responsible for his behavior?

Take a logic class or two.

There are plenty of reasons to kill Saddam. There is no reason to bring up things which the US had a hand in carrying out.

See above.

Read the text, please

[jtheory]

This was a common confusion, and he addresses this right at the top, before even answering any questions. Sure, 60% of companies who do some Linux development spend more time developing on some other platform.

btw, 'vitriol' has no 'e' (I know, I know... apologies for the offtopic correction)

Did you have a point?

[Gerry Gleason]

It is a study of Linux users, but it was not qualified they way you suggest. It is not a survey of Linux only users or developers. If that isn't clear to you, you didn't read any of the interview or other information about this. There certainly could be more questions about whether the survey sample is representative of the class (developers who use Linux sometimes), which is going to be hard to do anyway. I see no reason to doubt that they at least got a good cross section of the class, even if it isn't perfectly representative.

It certainly shows that there is movement from Windows to Linux, and that withing the limitations of the survey that this movement is larger than the move from other UNIX to Linux. I find this significant, and so do a lot of other people.

Re:Did you have a point?

[ClosedSource]

But isn't there a vested interest in Linux developers to debunk the "myth" that more Linux developers came from Unix than Windows? Isn't this the sort of question that is pretty easy to hedge on?

Jumping from developing Windows apps to Linux apps without Unix experience is obviously much more difficult than switching from Unix to Linux. Given that fact, I'm going to remain a skeptic until a more scientific study comes to the same conclusion.

Re:Did you have a point?

[Gerry Gleason]

No, I don't think it would be an easy question to hedge on, and I think most people would respond honestly. He also points out some of the survey questions that show that these are not all Linux zealots, just a bunch of pragmatic developers.

As far as jumping from Windows to Linux, I think it depends on what you are doing. If it's something with a lot of system interaction, then no, but in my experience only a minority of developers ever get that deep into system stuff, and many barely have a clue about such things. Also, just because someone was recently doing primarily Windows development, doesn't mean they don't have five to ten years of UNIX before that.

Re:Did you have a point?

[ClosedSource]

"No, I don't think it would be an easy question to hedge on, and I think most people would respond honestly"

And you base this conclusion on ...?

"Also, just because someone was recently doing primarily Windows development, doesn't mean they don't have five to ten years of UNIX before that."

But that's my point. People in the situation you describe were both Windows developers and Unix developers, so it would be misleading to claim this is exclusively a Windows to Linux switch. It's more like a switch from Unix to Linux with a brief stop at Windows along the way.

It's about the trend, not the 40%

[gotan]

The interesting thing here was the trend! The survey was focusing on Linux developers (developers involved in Linux developement), and so the "sample" was obviously not representative for developers worldwide, but hopefully it was representative for developers involved in Linux developement. So it's not surprising that a pretty high number (40%) of those focus primarily on Linux while 50% focus primarily on Windows.

The interesting part was, that the developers were also asked, what they would focus on in the future. The answer was, that in the future there'd be 50% focusing on Linux and 40% on Windows. So in the future there'll be a shift of focus towards Linux-developement, at least among the 400 developers surveyed.

Does this tell anything about how many developers worldwide will shift their focus towards Linux-development? Well if you take that 10% increase times the number of people worldwide involved with Linux-development (which the sample is supposed to represent) then you get an absolute number. You're missing the people not yet involved in Linux-development but focusing on it next year, and you're also missing job-starters who immediatley focus on Linux vs. jobstarters immediately focusing on Windows. So it's only a lower bound. But at least the absolute number of Linux-focused developers is on the rise, and if the "job-starters-effect" shows similar trends or is at least not canceling out the observed trend, then the percentage of developers focusing on Linux is also on the rise.

Interestingly the same survey next year (with a new sample) might still come up with the 40% for Linux and 50% for Windows numbers while the projections still hold true. Now how's that? Well the survey (or at least the numbers presented) does not reflect the number of developers who will become involved in Linux-development (so they end up in the next surveyed and "sampled" group) but still focus primarily on Windows (so they add to the 50% Windows-focused group).

Hmm, it's really easy to do some funny things with statistics.

Re:Yes.

[Lord Bitman]

While it cannot be said that were we not involved, no conflict would have occured, it can be generally assumed that related events being connected, the attack in question would not have happened without our aid. In that sense, we had a hand in carrying it out.

The point is, we supported them at the time regaurding their policies against Iran. We never supported Stalin regaurding his policies against.. uhh.. russian jews.. Stalin wasnt killing his own people because they were in the same feild-of-fire as an enemy which we were telling him to go after.

There /are/ plenty of reasons to kill Sadam. I really dont see the reason to bring up things we can somehow even be associated with. I'm sure that if we didnt, many people wouldnt be as opposed to this war.

but then we wouldnt be able to have this war as part of our blind flailing against potential threats.

but then we would be taking down someone who is evil instead of doing a 'preemptive strike' which goes against all logic, and we can't have that.

not useless at all...

[redfenix]

Useless? I think not.

If the numbers stand (which they may or may not), one could discern the percentage of all developers writing code mainly for Linux. For hypothetical reasons, we'll say the original survey reflected 10% of the entire programmer demographic. So, the survey found that 40% of its constituents write code mainly for linux. Therefore:

.40 * 10% = 4%

So, if the survey truly was 10% of the entire programmer population it would mean that 4% of all programmers are primarily actively targeting the Linux platform. I believe info such as this would be highly useful.

Now, here's the rub: finding the true percentage of all programmers the above poll represents, as well as deciding on the true validity of the original poll as well.

thanks!

[muyuubyou]

Sorry if my post offended someone, but I just had no time and I really was interested in the topic.
And what did I get? a -1 Troll... geez

BTW I'm very interested in porting my applications to Mac too. Trolltech and Metrowerks seem to have very nice solutions, but they're just too expensive (if my company bought it, it would be fine, but my bosses seem to think "there's nothing but windows and IE").
Anytime I mention cross-platform compatibility or even cross-browser compatibility I'm looked at like I was trying to levitate.

Maybe you know of any other solution...

Using Python+C+wxWindows/Tk looks promising but I heard wxWindows for Mac (Mach-o) is still a bit buggy. Tkinter is a bit cumbersome...

Oh, for the love of Pete

[Lendrick]

Shouldn't the survey have been sent out to 400 randomly chosen developers? Aren't you biasing the results already by choosing developers more likely to have some involvement with linux?

The claim that is being made given these survey results is that out of all developers who develop for Linux, the majority of those switched over from Windows, rather than Unix. It is not claiming that more developers on the whole are developing for Windows. It's just saying that Windows is losing more developers to Linux than Unix is. If they haven't switched to Linux, then they aren't relevant to the claim, because neither obviously Windows or Unix lost them to Linux.

take some advice.

[twitter]

"Mainstream", what is that? A GUI interface for an NT domain? Insert sound of a foghorn. Did you miss this:

7) Linux announcements from big companies...

by L0stb0Y

Do you see announcements from heavy hitters (like Dell, IBM, etc) helping sway more 'desktop users' to switching to Linux?

Nick:

This is only my opinion, not something from the report, but yes, I believe those announcements do help a lot.

This should be obvious. If the American Medical Association started recomending Ginko Bill-o-bah tomorrow, there's a good chance most reasonable people would be conviced that Ginko works. When IBM, HP, Wall Street banks and others pick up Linux, it might be reasonable to say that Linux has arrived and can do useful things for you. Equally obvious is that some people are hard to reach. They spit BS like this:

So quit buzzwording, clustering, XMLifying everything, and create something someone NEEDS.

Free software meets ALL of my computing needs. As there is nothing that non-free software does that free software can not do, free software could meet anyone's needs. What is an NT domain going to do for me again? Whatever. Mamma says, "If you don't have anything nice to say, shut up."

coins all running away

[twitter]

In another post you say:

Our business is out to make money, and selling software and services is just another way to do so, though it may not be what the company is acually based on.

Given that you are being run by idiots that do things like this:

My boss hired this Network Admin who was a MS zealot, and the first thing she did when she came in the building was take down those Linux servers. She couldn't stand them, not because of their supposed "difficulty," but mostly because she took some MS classes, and had no clue what UNIX was.

I doubt your company will achieve it's first objective. I would imagine that such a stupid and rude change would have made it difficult to realize income from previous projects you boast about:

We have an IT department that probably codes more than some software companies. Some of our software is licensed out to other companies, with some of my co-workers providing consulting on it.

Yes, it's true though the author did not say it, once you realize the power and beauty of free software, you never ever go back to fooling with expensive, buggy, closed SDKs and tools. In fact, it's painful for me to even look at a Windoze crippled machine. The author, however stayed away from such statements because that was not what he was after. He most wanted to know is Linux was taking mindshare from Unix or Windows.

Netscape was not freeware

[RALE007]

I recall Netscape being free for personal and educational use only. If a business wanted to use Netscape they were supposed to pay for the software. How do you think Netscape made any money if they only offered a free product? With the bundling and IE being free for anyone including businesses well... we know what happened.