Web survey? [LWN.net]

Web survey?

Posted Feb 13, 2006 18:14 UTC (Mon) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625)
Parent article: A new Linux/Windows TCO study

This seems to agree with the way things are in the real world, but did anyone else notice this on p. 4?

"This multi-faceted research study consisted of a telephone survey using a random sample of several thousand IT organizations, a web survey of self-selecting respondents, and in-depth interviews with CIOs and MIS Managers in 13 enterprises with Linux environments. Overall, the study netted over 200 responses."

How many in each category?

And can't you get a "web survey of self-selecting respondents" to say anything you want, depending on who you promote it to?

Wouldn't we be calling b------t on this if the results came out the other way?

(Interesting, though, that "Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf" took one week of training and now administers 50,000 Linux servers for $36,000/year and gets 99.9999% uptime.)

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Web survey?

Posted Feb 13, 2006 18:45 UTC (Mon) by maney (subscriber, #12630) [Link]

Well, yes - if it presented findings as counter to our experience as all the MS-sponsored TCO studies have. When what they're saying is clearly false, you look for explanations, and tend to assume the worst of any possible source of error.

OTOH, no, in that I wouldn't call the raising of valid concerns, as it usually done here on LWN, by that colorful name. Perhaps you're thinking of Slashdot?

Web survey?

Posted Feb 13, 2006 21:21 UTC (Mon) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link]

In my opinion, it is good advocacy to be as critical of studies that come out favorably for OSS as we are about "studies" that don't, regardless of the sponsor.

People take notice when an advocate says, hey, I agree with the outcome of this study, but the methodology has this (fill in the blank) problem.

Likewise, people notice when an advocate is just cheerleading.

Web survey?

Posted Feb 14, 2006 15:43 UTC (Tue) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link]

"" Likewise, people notice when an advocate is just cheerleading.""

At center target... at least for IT aware people.

Dont cheerlead rethoric, that only is advantageous to the party that *lie* the best, because common Joe will always go with the noise.

Promoting solutions, clear well documented HOWTOs with examples, like LTSP deployments and others, should be the norm for OSDL and others, because it would be advantageous to all from Corp to corner shop.