How many Fedora users are there? [LWN.net]

How many Fedora users are there?

Posted Oct 12, 2006 13:08 UTC (Thu) by jongeek (subscriber, #39233)
Parent article: How many Fedora users are there?

As I am not a Fedora or RHEL user, maybe I can make an objective comment. It seems perfectly reasonable for RH to want to count the number of Fedora users. But a Firefox start page ? Please. With all the fine RH engineers, no one can come up with a better idea ? Or, more likely, no one asked the engineers.

The metrics gained from this method are flawed to begin with. I use Opera and Konqueror for my web browsing, and I know I'm not alone. Why would they care to know every time a web browser was started ? What about systems that are not desktop systems ? This approach just seems like a bad idea, from a technical point of view.

The package update mechanism, already in place, seems like a better idea. Although it obviously won't count the users, who for whatever reason (and there are many good reasons), don't update their system through yum.

And why not ask a question at the end of the installation process ? Those doing interactive installs will likely not be bothered by taking a second or two to respond. And headless installs can be handled with a configuration parameter.

As long as RH is open about what they are doing, it seems to me that Fedora folks should be happy to participate. I have many privacy concerns about many things, but this hardly seems like a nefarious attempt to gather people's personal information.

(Log in to post comments)