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Attempts to Count Linux Users Remain Pointless
An anonymous reader writes "A great deal of attention is paid to numbers, but rarely does one actually ask what these numbers mean. One problem that many people have been trying to tackle is gauging the extent of use of Free software, including Linux. Questionnaires are not a solution here and neither are statistics, which are usually derived from the wrong data. The following article looks at the various challenges at hand and concludes that the growth rate of Linux is likely to remain an enigma."
It might not be entirely pointless to try, but I'm reasonably convinced of two things: I don't care (and don't need to) about the exact numbers, and it's growing.
I don't care largely because the software meets *my* needs. That's the most important thing to me. An assurance that it will continue to do so is also nice, and there are clearly a lot of people developing for it. I'm not worried on that front. People who have a big investment in *other people* using Linux (especially when said other people aren't developers) confuse me. (Well, except when they're trying to sell Linux software / services.)
It's growing. I can't tell you how much, but I can offer the anecdotal evidence that the responses I get to "I run Linux" have changed over the past few years. It's not always "What's that?" anymore. It's not uncommon to get questions about it in response -- people want to know how well it works, whether it runs the same software as Windows, etc. I just answer their questions and am polite and friendly about it.
Take a sample of 10000 people / companies.
Ask them if they use Linux of not
Extrapolate the results.
Seems to work when there counting all kinds of other things that don't have a direct method of counting them.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
That's a good way to start a Monday :-).
Actually, it's not so much that they are pointless - just that they are useless. There is a point to knowing how many Linux boxes are out there (demographic studies, confidence in support longevity as a function of install base, etc.) But most known techniques for counting remain useless.
To be honest, this might be just as well. Any technology that COULD count successfully all the Linux boxes out there would be a bit scary - many people probably don't WANT anyone to be able to know what they are running. (OK so nmap can probably figure out anyway...)
Large scale counts like this are a difficult proposition - the only things that approaches being successful in this respect are probably automobile registration systems, census systems, and the tax system - in other words, massive systems with compulsary reporting for every existing component member.
Now, of more interest might be to work with the BSA for a while (or someone else who has the authority to open random IT doors at random) and do an anonymous study of deployment percentages at random under guise of a random license check or soemthing. Probably (hopefully!) not legal but it would be a way to get statistically meaningful results if the sample was chosen well.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
Speaking as a person who has to go out on site as a consultant and recommend the best product for the job (regardless of personal bias) - and yes, that includes the places that are MS-only where i find myself saying "yeah, sql server 2005 is briliant", or "yeah, you should really get ms systems server op's center". I do believe things are changing somewhat. It started about 6-9months ago, i'd go out to a traditional windows company and they'd be running a samba server with apache where there used to be IIS and win 2k3.
Then a friends company (not a small one mind you) went off to do a linux-on-the-desktop study as alot of their windows agreements were about to become eol so to speak. At first I thought this was a bargaining tool to get cheaper software, but I was surprised to find that not only was it about replacing the desktop but also the server side functionality. It turned out they'd started looking at linux desktops because they'd managed to gain some linux servers to replace most costly machines (some windows, but alot were aix or solaris) - interestingly, alot of the now-linux server hardware are sun x86'ers running centos. As a result they took on some linux types to administer them, and it grew - they replaced a few non-essential file servers. changed a few mail gateways to linux. Moved proxies to squid. As their CTO put it "i was suddenly surrounded by linux and didn't realise it until i looked at the balance sheets, all we are paying for is hardware and alot of the things we are using linux for are internally grown and maintained. I started to think we weren't paying for licenses were we should be". One of the things that did take him by supprise is that half his IT department by this time had switched to a linux desktop and used mail thru imap or some such (some were using windows still thru vmware player or from a terminal server running outlook). Apparently if you pxe boot off alot of the networks, you'll get a pxelinux menu that allows you to boot various things like dsl or install a customized ubuntu (though i didn't see that myself). I know they're also running some systems with RHEL too because they "feel good" to know they have support.
To sum it up, i was quite shocked. 12 months ago I was feeling "unix was coming to an end" and feeling quite disappointed by that, but I feel quite elated by what i've seen lately - Especially so in Australia where linux has had a really tough time of it.
Having said all that, i think the author wasn't just referring to linux users but also the users of FOSS replacements for commercial applications (like open office, gimp, etc). I can't say i've seen a tonne of that myself, but its not uncommon to see things like gaim, firefox, jedit, eclipse - smaller things really.
It will be very interesting to see what the next 12months brings us.