Fedora Metrics Help Whole Linux Community

lisah writes "When Fedora released Fedora Core 6 late last year, the team decided to track the number of users with unique IP addresses who connected to yum in search of updates for a new installation of FC6. According to the data they collected, FC6 crossed the one-million user mark in just 74 days. Fedora Project Leader Max Spevack says that while it's great to use metrics to better understand what users want, the real value lies in its ability to encourage hardware vendors to more offer more Linux-oriented goods and services. Spevack told Linux.com: '[W]e always say we wish hardware vendors had more [Linux-capable] drivers. Well, if you can go to them and say, "Hey, there's millions of people using this," then maybe they will listen. In the real world, you need data to prove your case. Well, here it is.'" Linux.com and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.

Comments

Distinct, not "unique"

[ColonelPanic]

IP addresses are necessarily unique ("one of a kind"). You mean "distinct" here.

Re:Saddly...

[whoever57]

Saddly this metric will be very quickly attacked because of all users who have broadband connections with IP changing every 24 hours.

All users? I don't think my cable IP address (dynamically assigned) has changed in over a year.

People != Computers

[RyoShin]

Well, if you can go to them and say, "Hey, there's millions of people using this,"

Actually, it's a million computers using this (that's actually at least a million computers, as multiple PCs may be behind one public IP). Especially amongst the more computer-oriented people (of which the Linux community has many), it's not uncommon to have more than one computer running the same OS. I myself have three computers, two of which run Windows (the third is being put together). While these are tied to one DSL line, one of them, a laptop, may travel to other wireless networks and thus change IPs, so I could be recorded under two unique IPs but be only one person.

Not saying there isn't a vast number of Linux users (I'm sure there are well over a million individual Linux users - that's a third of 1% of just the American population), just that numbers from data like this can be skewed.

Re:People != Computers

[bky1701]

You have it backwards. Are you going to download 3 fedora CDs because you have 3 computers? Maybe if they are differing archs... but that's not normally the case. Thus, the number would be LARGER than the one they gave, because many people use the same CD for more than one install, give their CDs away after using them, etc.

Why only now?

[Pecisk]

Personally I don't understand shyness/lack of will/underrating ourselves in these case. Look at Firefox, they made whole PR campange around those numbers! And if they won't matter....THEY DO. They are true numbers who can be verifired, checked, compared, etc.

I think most of problem of using meme "look at the numbers, user count are huge, man" is that there's lot of geeks which don't see this argument as simply valid (those numbers can't be wrong, etc. etc.). They would like to better convince hardware developers that they MUST get those damn specs (by some hidden morale or simple common sense, which, I agree, exists in this case too) out rather trying to wow them to community side (presentations, numbers, proof of concept (you don't have to care about driver, etc.)).

We need more actions like SpreadFirefox, period. Done right, they just work.

No

[DrYak]

Collecting non-personally identifying data, that would be logged anyway during the normal process of the server function (httpd/ftpd daemons will log connection anyway wether or not FC owners choose to do something out of it) and publishing only the compiled form (the total number. Opposed to the complete obfuscated [rot5 scrambled ?] list, AOL-style), ISN'T EVIL (It just similar to the "number of visitors" counters back in the old Web 1.0 days).

Collecting data in an opt-in manner like http://counter.li.org/ to do statistic. ISN'T EITHER

Collecting data, that don't necessary need to be collected for technical reason (IP address vs. Pentium serial number), without telling it the user first, without asking permission to the user first, THAT IS EVIL (and regularly done by microsoft and other object of hatred from the /. crowd).

Read the summary, at least

[ukatoton]

the team decided to track the number of users with unique IP addresses who connected to yum in search of updates for a new installation of FC6

.

It's how any new systems are being checked for the first time, and most people probably aren't reinstalling it constantly and downloading updates, so there's very little attacking you could do to these figures.

Re:But....

[Florian Weimer]

Doesn't collecting data make you evil?

Only if you call the process "activation" instead of "metrics".

Using IP addresses for marketing?

[Kelson]

Except collecting the IP addresses then using them for marketing purposes is not necessary

How are they using the IP address for marketing purposes? They're using the number of IP addresses. No one can take the information they've released and determine that a computer at x.x.x.x is running Fedora. (And the information they have, they would have had anyway -- just like Slashdot knows the IP address you posted from.) As the GP said, it's no different from a website processing its server logs and reporting that it had X unique visitors during period Y.

Come to think of it, since yum fetches data over HTTP, it is a website processing its server logs and reporting the number of unique visitors.

Even if it were MS, it wouldn't be evil.

[Kadin2048]

There might be an outcry if Microsoft did that, just because people hate Microsoft and think Microsoft is evil, but that wouldn't mean that doing it would be evil. (So, Microsoft may in fact be evil, but not necessarily everything they do is evil, and moreover, just because they could do something, doesn't make it evil.)

There's nothing wrong with saying "x people accessed Windows Update this [year|month|day]." That's no different from the hit counters that used to exist on every web site. (And which were tacky, and I thank God that people finally realized this.)

What would be evil, and the temptation they need to avoid, is to take their server logs and start mining them for data that can be sold or used for malicious purposes; i.e. personally identifying information about what users are using what versions of Windows, or even how often they're updating, etc.

Aggregate information about hits is something that HTTP servers and their operators do all the time. Where it gets evil is when you have cookies tracking particular users across multiple sites, etc.

Re:RH response to Ubuntu's 8 million number?

[Locutus]

I wasn't interested in a "my numbers are bigger than your" discussion and obviously, there are more TOTAL Fedora user than the number of Fedora 6 users.

And yes, it's a big deal having data and the technique for getting those numbers. Shuttleworth didn't state where the numbers came from but also wasn't asked. My guess is those numbers came from their date servers since I've seen default Ubuntu installations setting /etc/default/ntpdate to point to ubuntu.com servers.

Anyway, it is great these numbers are getting out there and even better when they can be validated.

Now, the problem will be dealing with the bitch-slapping hardware vendors are going to get from Microsoft for even saying the "L" word.

LoB