How many Fedora users are there?
In particular, the Fedora leadership wanted that page to include a tracking image - an image hosted on a Fedora web site which would allow the project to track how many people were starting up Fedora's version of Firefox, and which IP addresses they came from. It would appear that few people had any sense that there might be objections to this technique; the resulting discussion seemed to take them by surprise. But a discussion did result, focusing on a few questions: why does Fedora want to track its users, why the hurry to get this change into FC6, and isn't there a better way?
At the moment, it seems, the Fedora Project has very little idea of how widely used their work is. That is an ignorance they share with a great many free software projects, but Fedora's situation, it seems, has the potential to make that ignorance expensive. The best description of Fedora's motives came from Greg DeKoenigsberg; it is worth quoting at length:
Why? Because, like it or not, every funding conversation inside of Red Hat's walls begins and ends with metrics. If it isn't measurable, it doesn't exist. Fact.
This is especially important in the case of Fedora, because Fedora doesn't make any money directly for Red Hat. We continue to develop Fedora because it serves other purposes. Research and development. Quality Assurance for RHEL. The ethics of continuing to provide free software, which is important to all of us. And, most importantly from my own perspective, *community mindshare*.
If we can't quantify Fedora's mindshare in some way, we lose one of the *major* rationales for making the Fedora Project stronger and more independent. Every time a Red Hat executive asks "how many Fedora users are out there?" and we answer "oh, somewhere between 100k and a few million," we make it *that* much more difficult to defend Fedora from bad Red Hat decisions. If a Red Hat executive has to choose between giving resources to RHEL and giving resources to Fedora, and if he's got dollar figures on one side of the ledger and hand-wavy "mindshare" guesses on the other side of the ledger, he's going to choose RHEL. Every single time. I've seen it happen, again and again and again and again. And again.
Fedora has, slowly over the years, become a more open and transparent free software project. It is also clearly a successful project, with a large (if unknown) number of users worldwide. But the fact remains that Fedora is a Red Hat project, with Red Hat being the source of almost all of the funding that keeps Fedora going. This funding is a generous gift from Red Hat to the community (though Red Hat certainly benefits from it as well), but it puts Fedora into a strongly dependent position. Fedora must keep Red Hat happy, and convince Red Hat of its importance, if it is to continue to be funded properly.
According to Max Spevack, there is no concern about Fedora funding being cut; this exercise is, instead, about getting that funding increased. But the evident level of concern belies that claim somewhat. Even if there is no discussion of cutting Fedora funding now, it seems like a subject which could come up in the future. Red Hat is becoming just another company in many ways, and it will make the calculations that companies need to make to survive. It would not take too many bad quarters for Red Hat to start looking very hard at the money spent on Fedora; managers under pressure to improve their numbers can be very short-sighted at times. So it makes sense for the Fedora project to be concerned about its ongoing relationship with Red Hat.
It almost seems that something must have happened to reinforce this idea in the minds of the Fedora leadership. If so, they aren't talking about it. But they have decided that it is important to get some sort of mechanism into FC6 which would give them at least rudimentary statistics. Waiting another cycle for FC7, it seems is not an option. Given the short time available to put anything into FC6, the Fedora folks settled quickly on something which would be easy to implement: a tracking image.
There are obvious problems with the tracking image idea, starting with the privacy concerns. Not everybody wants to be tracked in this way. People with this sort of concern may also not be much comforted by the Fedora privacy policy page, which leads off with this text:
Beyond that, it has been pointed out that this technique only yields IP addresses, which will only be correlated with the number of actual installations in a very rough manner. But that information, it seems, is much better than nothing.
There are alternatives. One idea which has been discussed is a brief user survey which shows up at the end of the installation process. Users could then provide some information - or, crucially, choose not to. Nobody seems to think that such a mechanism could be added to FC6 at this late date, however; though it could show up in FC7.
The Fedora folks could also take advantage of the fact that a new Fedora installation already phones home. It is all for the best of purposes: the yum-updatesd daemon, which runs by default, goes to the central Fedora server to download the lists of repository mirrors. The project has not been using the tracks that this activity leaves - but they could. Greg describes it as "an absolute no-brainer":
This approach is not perfect either. It fails on systems which are offline,
while every system running Firefox has a high probability of being
connected. It also cannot distinguish systems which are likely to be
"desktop" systems - information which is apparently of interest. But it's
there now and, as Greg points out, it doesn't seem to set off alarms the
way a tracking image would. Hopefully Fedora will share the conclusions it
draws from this data - and make good use of it to convince Red Hat
management of the project's importance.
(Log in to post comments)
How many Fedora users are there?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 1:44 UTC (Thu) by ajross (guest, #4563) [Link]
If a Red Hat executive has to choose between giving resources to RHEL and giving resources to Fedora, and if he's got dollar figures on one side of the ledger and hand-wavy "mindshare" guesses on the other side of the ledger, he's going to choose RHEL.
And so it ends. Well, it was good while it lasted. Farewell, Red Hat. You were great in your time.
Either a company feels that its community support is the foundation of its mindshare and business model, or it does not. It is clear from the above which category today's Red Hat, Inc. falls into.
Happily, Ubuntu is here now, arguably a better community member than even Red Hat in its heyday, and produces a damn fine distro. And when they jump the shark, no doubt someone else will carry the torch. The idea lives on, even if the original shell is cold and dead.
How many Fedora users are there?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 1:56 UTC (Thu) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]
Fedora is, among other things, the beta for RHEL. Without Fedora, RHEL's quality and stability will suffer.
How many Fedora users are there?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 3:17 UTC (Thu) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
Please, let's lay off Red Hat bashing. Even if Red Hat were to drop Fedora today, you could still get all of their development work by downloading RHEL SRPMS. Also, Red Hat employs some fine developers that are contributing to important FOSS projects daily.
> Either a company feels that its community support is the foundation of its mindshare and business model, or it does not. It is clear from the above which category today's Red Hat, Inc. falls into.
It's not clear to me at all. Good company executives usually make their decisions based on verifiable information. There is nothing wrong with wanting to know why a free software project like Fedora should be bankrolled by Red Hat.
For instance, I use Fedora on my machines (among other reasons) in order to keep in touch with the direction of Red Hat development, so that when new versions of RHEL and CentOS come along (working with which pays my bills), I know what to expect and what to recommend. I'm guessing Red Hat executives in charge of bankrolling Fedora would find statistics related to how many people out there do the same interesting.
By providing verifiable information to Red Hat executives, Fedora has a much better chance of surviving as a project, IMHO.
How many Fedora users are there?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 3:33 UTC (Thu) by ajross (guest, #4563) [Link]
Good company executives usually make their decisions based on verifiable information. There is nothing wrong with wanting to know why a free software project like Fedora should be bankrolled by Red Hat.
There was a time when Red Hat promised that its software would always remain free and open. When they recognized that they didn't write the software in their product, but that they received it from a pre-existing community of users. When they perceived their product not only as a way to make money but as a way to give back to the community.
When the point has been reached of even considering the possibility of terminating the community distribution, it is clear that this spirit is dead at Red Hat. It's a shame, really, because it's not the way the people who ran the company I remember felt. Is it "bad business" to view the community as primary? Maybe. But in the open source world, it's also parasitic and selfish.
How many Fedora users are there?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 4:24 UTC (Thu) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
> When the point has been reached of even considering the possibility of terminating the community distribution, it is clear that this spirit is dead at Red Hat.
I respectfully disagree.
If a piece of software can be downloaded as a bunch of buildable SRPMS, it is free software. And that's RHEL. It is available free and it is open just like RH promised, keeping the spirit alive, with or without Fedora and regardless of what Jonathan Schwartz says.
In fact, if you don't like building RHEL from scratch, you can get a starting point by downloading ISOs from RH: http://www.redhat.com/rhel/details/eval/.
You and I may not like RHEL support pricing structure, but that's a whole different ball of wax.
If Red Hat see that providing financial support for Fedora is financially worse then not having Fedora, then they have to do what they have to do. But I'm not seeing they are considering that yet. They just want to know how they're spending their dollars. And that is a good thing, IMHO.
> Is it "bad business" to view the community as primary? Maybe. But in the open source world, it's also parasitic and selfish.
How can Red Hat be parasitic and selfish when you can download as FOSS almost all software that Red Hat wrote themselves, plus all the contributions they made to other projects, like glibc, gcc, kernel etc.? By paying developers to make this software, they are financing FOSS. There is nothing parasitic and selfish about that - the whole things ends up back in the community.
How many Fedora users are there?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 5:09 UTC (Thu) by davej (subscriber, #354) [Link]
Yawn. It amuses me how every time something controversial relating to Fedora appears out come the conspiracy theories and the claims that "OMFG Red Hat are killing off Fedora".
For a company "considering the possibility of terminating the community distribution", we're doing some pretty darn strange things. Like say, trying to hire more developers that work exclusively on Fedora.
The day Red Hat decide to "abandon the community" is the day I (and probably several other Red Hat employees) start looking for another job at a company with values we believe in, and Red Hat management realise that. Four years ago, that was my reasoning for joining Red Hat. Because it wasn't "just another company" without values that employees actually believed in. Today, I'm still at Red Hat, because those values still hold true, and for as far as I can personally see in the future, it will remain that way.
Much ado about nothing.
How many Fedora users are there?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 9:31 UTC (Thu) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link]
I accept your words at face value. However, maybe you can contribute the message up the chain that an image problem exists?
I dunno how to combat an image problem with the village idiots, but I think it's important to Red Hat that the Fedora Doubt goes away. It will have intangible benefits.
How many Fedora users are there?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 9:50 UTC (Thu) by davej (subscriber, #354) [Link]
I think Seth summed it up much better than I could. I don't deny that in some peoples eyes things don't look quite so rosy, but we've come a long way over the last few years, and overcome a lot of obstacles (Some of which admittedly took way too long).
Comparing the Fedora project of 2003, which was still very closely Red Hat controlled to what we have today is worlds apart. (And we still have a long way to go). The fact that the discussions that prompted this article are even happening publically is testament to that.
We got criticised (rightly) for making decisions behind closed doors, and now we're getting criticised for doing our dirty laundry in public. Yes, sometimes some really bad ideas come up, and the phone-home idea perhaps wasn't as thought through as it should have been, but the point is: It was aired to the community, to get feedback before being implemented. Who says we aren't listening?
Regardless of what we (Red Hat, or the Fedora project) do, we aren't going to please everyone, and in many cases, we shouldn't try to. If a vocal minority had their way, Fedora would be shipping enablers for binary kernel modules, and other proprietary garbage by now.
How many Fedora users are there?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 16:28 UTC (Thu) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]
The image problem has existed to some people since 1994. After spending years in Red Hat support trying to combat that image.. I realized there is nothing that can be done to change it in those people's minds that have a bad idea about Red Hat. From what I can tell, it is a partisan/religous debate in their minds.. and so their brain does not process information favorable to Red Hat, but only see information that fits their cause.
All you can do is just keep trucking.
How many Fedora users are there?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 16:56 UTC (Thu) by ajross (guest, #4563) [Link]
The image problem has existed to some people since 1994.But, as I've pointed out, not to me. I used Red Hat throughout this period. Hell, if you google around, you'll probably find references to me defending you guys from the anti-corporate hordes. I was loyal.
Yet you have lost me as a customer. Now, one way to deal with this is to put your head in the sand and write my dissatisfaction (and, potentially, lost sales) off as an inevitability. Another is to question whether Fedora is worthwhile at all and (apparently) threaten them with resource constraints if they can't prove their popularity.
Still another might be to consider if, just possibly, it was a change in behavior on Red Hat's part that caused the loss of mindshare. One is tempted to point out that in 1994 (or 1997, when I started using the distro), every penny that Red Hat spent on development popped back out in a downloadeable ISO that we could use for whatever we wanted, just like we were "real" customers (which, I argue, we were). This wasn't true of SuSE, nor of Caldera, nor of any of the other now forgotten attempts at a commercialized linux distro. But Red Hat was Free, and we loved you guys for it. And we used your software. And when we got a chance to write checks for linux, we wrote them to you. And you won.
Where did that Red Hat go? From where I sit, the company seems to be called "Canonical" today.
How many Fedora users are there?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 18:18 UTC (Thu) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
Hear hear. I stuck loyally with Red Hat from versions 4 through 7, even the bad days. Problem was, as Red Hat started going after the Enterprise market , they were leaving their day-to-day users into the ghetto (that's what it seemed like to me anyway). And that's cool -- they can do whatever they want. And now I mostly run Debian and Ubuntu.
Mugshot is pure comedy... I'd suggest cancelling that bizarre project long before worrying about Fedora funding!
How many Fedora users are there?
Posted Oct 13, 2006 1:09 UTC (Fri) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
> One is tempted to point out that in 1994 (or 1997, when I started using the distro), every penny that Red Hat spent on development popped back out in a downloadeable ISO that we could use for whatever we wanted, just like we were "real" customers (which, I argue, we were).
Given that English in not my native language, I went and checked what the customer actually means. Here is the first hit (and others are similar) from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/customer:
------------------------------
1. One that buys goods or services.
2. Informal. An individual with whom one must deal: a tough customer.
------------------------------
Now, unless want to call downloaders "tough customers", it would seem that they were no customers at all :-). And that's the rub here.
Red Hat is a company (companies generally exist to make money). They identified the market they wanted to address (mostly, it would seem, Unix server replacements). With that market, they also identified their customers (yes, the *real* ones). They went for it and their customers decided to pay subscription fees for a certified distro. They made money. I'm not a fortuneteller, so I don't know what's going to happen next.
> Where did that Red Hat go?
See above.
Whether we like this or not, unless we're shareholders or employees of Red Hat, we cannot decide what they should do. It is completely up to them.
And free market competition will do the rest.
How many Fedora users are there?
Posted Oct 13, 2006 14:08 UTC (Fri) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]
I no longer work for Red Hat... I left 5 years ago to do other things for a while. I also only use RHEL at work since I do not have a reason to pay for it for home use (there I use Fedora, Centos, and rpath)
I was only trying to point out that back during the time I worked there (1997-2001) and before I worked there.. Red Hat had an image problem with a certain set of people who labeled Red Hat as "money-grubbing" in one way or another.
The fact was that the boxed sets were always a money loss. If we took the maximum number of boxed sets we had ever sold, we found that to cover the cost of developers, ftpsite, etc. we needed to charge a minimum price-point of USd ~75.00. Add on just installation support we needed to sell them at USD 85.00. [The reason for this is that for a listed price of 75.00, the company only sees about 35.00. The rest is selling through channel costs and dealing with returns by channel, etc.]
The only profits we made were for specific support projects, and they were not enough of them to really keep us going.
When we priced box sets at 60.00 for RHL7, we saw that the majority of the original Red Hat buyers saw that was too much for them and sales of that product were too low. The only way to make money on selling boxed sets was to not have more than 2-4 developers and 1-2 support staff (and hope the quality of the product didnt suffer *ha*).
Does this mean I am trying to convince you not to dislike Red Hat? No. I am just trying to explain things from my point of view.
How many Fedora users are there?
Posted Oct 19, 2006 12:22 UTC (Thu) by JamesEM (guest, #41209) [Link]
>By providing verifiable information to Red Hat executives,>Fedora has a much better chance of surviving as a project.
Any RedHat exec with sense should never make that trade, if the
Company gets into difficulties. It was clever to separate the "Brand
Values" of Fedora and RHEL, but that doesnt make Fedora as "disposable"
as the free staff that _created_ the critical mass for RedHat
to be able to exploit the mainstream market. Many "useless burdens"
were discarded at RedHat Linux EOL like an empty booster stage.
Maneovering for profit and success is rarely a victim free exercise.
Suddenly. many enterprise level support people found themselves
downgraded to "enthusiasts" relegated to Linux Desktop development,
and seeking credible enterprise alternatives that are more open
and less ethically mutable. At a disadvantage in their own market.
Should RHEL maintain entirely separate R&D support? I went ballistic
on the selinux list when RHEL rpms were offered up for (free!) testing.
The place for that is Fedora, otherwise a US taxpayer organization is
being used to underwrite commercial corporate R&D and provide unfair
market advantage. Thats a complete no-no, here in the EU.
Besides, all RHEL testers have a right to expect a financial return on
any such effort, surely? That *is* the business model Redhat chose for
themselves!
This grates with the guarantee of open access to a distro that once
benefitted from FREE R&D, and testing. Corporate execs at RedHat did
indeed lose the plot. Its easier to seek forgiveness than permission.
But they'll never regain my trust.
I dont like being made a victim. RedHat "mugged" a lot of long term
supporters and contributers with their changes. The personal ROI for
supporting Open Source products is a difficult enough niche. They
"captured" a substantial third party support market for themselves.
Fedora was the only return on that. Not good enough. ( for me ).
I've rejected the entire edifice, in total disgust.
A substantial investment in my time testing and integrating early selinux
as S/RPMs in RH Linux 9 went down the toilet at the EOL of that product.
Never again. Now: an additional learning curve to gain the same
skill levels with Debian/Ubuntu; a burden that compromises MY ability to
make a return on many years of OSS experience. Time and money. I no
longer have alternative sources of income to subsidize free R&D, and
for sure I'm not inclined to do that at no cost for any for-profit
corporate!
Corporate reality: Metrics ARE necessary.
So: with a little imagination, make it an open participation exercise.
You'll get better data! No sneaky stuff, no need for it.
Perceived as a tinfoil-hat type by some, yet I'm perfectly
happy to submit ( and use personally ) unique IDs for builds I maintain.
How hard can it be to "open source" _behaviour_ in this regard?
If the user has complete control over how those IDs get exposed from
their systems, its a non-issue. If you dont want to participate, then
dont provide the information.
( There should be a clear choice, and no penalties for choosing ).
Separate metrics and tracking. They are not the same! There need not be
privacy invasion; IP as a unique identifier is useless as a metric.
Forget that approach.
How hard is it for a given distro provider ( Corporate business _or_ org )
to openly have a simple form that combines various unique things from a
particular build - disk ID, MAC NIC address(es) into one (big) hash that
has a simple index number on their database? System builder gets the unique
index number, the company bean counters and marketers gain useful metrics.
The sysadmin ( by index ID only ) is invited to participate. Volunteer the
status of your build ( test, disposable ), or mainstream use. Even better.
Heck, why not provide a "group" ID, with some simple inventory and journal
fields for people to use? Thats could be of mutual benefit, if implemented
properly.
Hmmm. Maybe the community can support an OSS project like this as a common
standard for all distro providers? Just a thought!
Self-described Kubuntu user?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 8:04 UTC (Thu) by mingo (subscriber, #31122) [Link]
And so it ends. Well, it was good while it lasted. Farewell, Red Hat. You were great in your time.Are you perhaps the same Ajross (Alistair Ross) as the one here? To quote Ajross from that page:
I use Kubuntu (a Debian based distro), just in case you were wondering.
And, according to the wiki edit history, you were a Ubuntu user a year ago and then switched to Kubuntu. Pretty amusing i think ...
Self-described Kubuntu user?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 8:17 UTC (Thu) by malor (guest, #2973) [Link]
The distribution he uses is irrelevant; his ideas are what you should be talking about. Foolish, wise, whatever.... it's the idea that matters. Are your arguments so weak that you have to try to make implications based on the *distro* he runs?
LWN has been a repository for some of the most polite and insightful Linux commentary I know; your reply is not at all in that spirit.
Self-described Kubuntu user?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 10:32 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
In response to a comment stating that FEDORA IS DYING OH NOO, it is germane to point out that the commenter doesn't actually *use* Fedora and would likely be fairly unaffected by its demise (except inasmuch as its demise would worsen things for all of us).
Self-described Kubuntu user?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 14:10 UTC (Thu) by ajross (guest, #4563) [Link]
Are you perhaps the same Ajross (Alistair Ross) as the one here?No. My name is Andy Ross. I was a Slackware user 1993-1997, when I switched to Red Hat which I used and recommended exclusively up until about a year ago. My last Fedora installation was replaced just about a month ago, when I bought a new laptop running Dapper.
I'm not sure why that's important, but if you're going to point out "amusing" ad hominems, you might as well do it about the right person.
And, as for Seth and Dave's defense: you guys are great. You do good work, and the Red Hat money paying your salaries is well spent and an excellent way to give back to the community. But your bosses don't get it. I'm sorry, but they don't. And at this point, I think it's driven the final nail into the coffin for me. I won't be using Fedora anymore, nor recommending Red Hat as a platform choice.
Self-described Kubuntu user?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 14:27 UTC (Thu) by skvidal (guest, #3094) [Link]
Umm. I don't work for red hat.
That subject has been broached a number of times and the answer is always the same for me:
I can do a lot more for fedora outside of red hat.
red hat's never paid me for anything. I've never even accepted a flight anywhere.
-sv
Self-described Kubuntu user?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 14:51 UTC (Thu) by ajross (guest, #4563) [Link]
I don't work for red hat.My apologies. I just assumed. I'm not sure how that changes the argument, though. I mean, the hypothetical here is that Red Hat might be considering (at some point in the nebulous future) the possibility of taking your software and releasing it in a distribution that isn't usable* by the community. Is that OK with you? Maybe it is. It certainly wouldn't be with me, and it doesn't seem very nice.
My problem here isn't that Red Hat is doing something evil right now. It's that they seem to have become confused about what evil means in the open source world. Perceiving the community distribution as somehow in competition with the enterprise distro for development dollars is exactly that: it tells me that they just simply don't understand their obligation (yes, obligation: they didn't write the software, they got it from us) to give back in exchange for what they received.
That is "evil", in the milder Google sense of the word. And I'll be frank: it has driven me away from the distribution and toward ones that don't share the same cynicism. I suspect I am not alone. Remember that the reason that Red Hat "won" against all the other commercial linux distributions was user mindshare; and that mindshare owed almost exclusively to the fact that Red Hat was always freely available to the community. I suspect current management has forgotten.
* SRPM trolls: please don't. Sure you can compile your own distro; you can do that from the raw sources, too. But claiming that making source code available without an install image is the same thing as "giving back to the community" is ridiculous on its face.
Self-described Kubuntu user?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 15:01 UTC (Thu) by skvidal (guest, #3094) [Link]
One - no one is asking you to rebuild your own srpms. You can let the centos project do that for you. Which is what I do.
Oh and just for the record: The work we did on fedora in terms of changing the packaging tools, etc has changed how rhel gets updated for the future.
That echoes down the line, making centos rebuilds easier and making my job simpler all around.
I'm all for freedom. This means the freedom of rh to take code that I wrote and use it in their best interest. The only trick is that they have to release their code back. And they do. How much more could I ask of them?
-sv
Self-described Kubuntu user?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 15:20 UTC (Thu) by ajross (guest, #4563) [Link]
How much more could I ask of them?I, for one, would ask them to release back the product (the whole, not the bits & pieces) that they created with it, so that I might use it, know it, and recommend it to my friends. This is not required by typical licenses, but it is fair. This is the policy of community-based distributions like Debian and Gentoo. It is the policy of Ubuntu also, who don't play such games with release management.
And, most frustratingly, it used to be the policy of Red Hat, and one of the reasons I used and recommended their distribution exclusively for something like eight years. Even when Fedora was split off and RHEL was firewalled as "open, but not freely available from Red Hat" I continued to use it, because I believed in their commitment to the community.
But today, I read in the above article that even the "community" distribution, which so far continues to be freely available, needs to justify (justify!) its existence to upper management. Sorry, but that's the end for me. If you were the only distribution around (or even clearly the best), I would be more tolerant. But you just aren't, sorry. There are better options.
Self-described Kubuntu user?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 15:29 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
This isnt about the existence of Fedora or not. This is about understanding more metrics to increase the Red Hat funds on Fedora.
Self-described Kubuntu user?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 15:36 UTC (Thu) by ajross (guest, #4563) [Link]
Please read the rest of the thread, and my posts specifically. I believe I have been very clear about what I mean throughout. Adding one-liner posts to long flame wars like this only cheapens the discussion and gets us side tracked on correction posts like this one. And yes, I realize I am breaking my own rule with this post. :)
Self-described Kubuntu user?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 16:23 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
Clarifying a claim that discussion isnt about the justification of the need of Fedora doesnt cheapen the discussion in anyway. Red Hat has already said that it will continue to support a free distribution as recently as https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2006...
Self-described Kubuntu user?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 16:44 UTC (Thu) by ajross (guest, #4563) [Link]
Red Hat has already said that it will continue to support a free distribution [...]This claim is clearly contradicted, in spirit at least, by the quote I referenced all the way up at the top of this thread. Maintaining a token "community distribution" is largely meaningless if your development resources are being spent on the "non-community" version instead. Thus, my rant.
Sure, many people don't care about this distinction and will continue to use Fedora anyway. But I care. And, as a long-term and formerly loyal user, I thought folks might be interested in why I have abandoned Red Hat. To my eyes, they have simply lost their way. It strikes me that Red Hat's management doesn't understand that Shuttleworth and the folks at Canonical are eating their lunch in the mindshare wars. This kind of thinking is why.
Self-described Kubuntu user?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 16:52 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
The contradiction seems to be from your misunderstanding. This is what I have been trying to get across to you. The quote you referenced above was in a discussion related to getting MORE funds alloted to Fedora than what is being currently spend on it.
Red Hat does spend a lot of money in Fedora already. The announcement regarding the foundation explained some of this. More information is available at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Accounting
Self-described Kubuntu user?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 21:18 UTC (Thu) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
> I'm not sure how that changes the argument, though. I mean, the hypothetical here is that Red Hat might be considering (at some point in the nebulous future) the possibility of taking your software and releasing it in a distribution that isn't usable* by the community. Is that OK with you?
> * SRPM trolls: please don't. Sure you can compile your own distro; you can do that from the raw sources, too. But claiming that making source code available without an install image is the same thing as "giving back to the community" is ridiculous on its face.
I guess you're referring to me here, as I was the one pointing out the SRPMS.
First, thanks for the name calling. Really appreciate it.
Second, yes, it's OK because the distro is usable. It is usable by downloading an eval set of (mostly up to date) binary ISOs. It is also usable by downloading CentOS and other similar distros.
Under what theory are Red Hat obligated to provide endless updates (and therefore support) to non-paying "customers"? If Canonical want to do that - well, it's their choice (we'll see how it works out when the cash runs out). Doesn't change anything about Red Hat and their commitment to FOSS.
This baseless, supposedly "morally superior" Red Hat whining is really becoming annoying.
Self-described Kubuntu user?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 21:35 UTC (Thu) by ajross (guest, #4563) [Link]
Under what theory are Red Hat obligated to provide endless updates (and therefore support) to non-paying "customers"? If Canonical want to do that - well, it's their choice (we'll see how it works out when the cash runs out).That's precisely what everyone said about Red Hat in the late 90's. "They're too free." "There's no business model." "You can't make money on goodwill." Red Hat crushed everyone else. Now they are everyone else, and rapidly losing to Ubuntu. Just as nothing legally obligates Red Hat to make their distribution directly available to the community, nothing obligates the user community to care about a distro they can't meaningfully use.
Here's a concrete example: I work at a company with a product that runs, almost exclusively, on RHEL. That's what the customers are running, so that's what we deploy on. Guess how many of the developers are using RHEL (or even RHEL clones) on their desktop machines? Zero. I was the last Fedora holdout (mostly for the very robust amd64 multilib support), and I switched over to Ubuntu a month ago when I got a new box and discovered Dapper multilib to be acceptable. So I ask you: is RHEL a dominant player or just a legacy platform?
I apologize for calling you a troll, by the way. I just fail to see how you can claim, with a straight face, that the source code availability of RHEL is morally the same as providing an installable OS. The abundantly transparent purpose behind making RHEL install images "purchase only" is quite obviously to prevent the community from "freeloading" and encourage corporate users to buy licenses instead of using "unofficial" distros like Centos. I find that insulting, frankly. And I find your insensitivity to that fact puzzling.
Self-described Kubuntu user?
Posted Oct 13, 2006 0:23 UTC (Fri) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
> So I ask you: is RHEL a dominant player or just a legacy platform?
Who cares. Whatever they make of their destiny as a company is their choice. If it turns out that Canonical business model is better, so be it.
Doesn't make RHEL any more or less free.
> I just fail to see how you can claim, with a straight face, that the source code availability of RHEL is morally the same as providing an installable OS.
How about you provide engineers, machines, offices and bandwidth for a free, fully supported community distro which will be timely updated for at least 5 years? Well, unless you're Mark Shuttleworth and have millions to throw around, you'll find it hard to run a successful business out of that.
Red Hat aren't even obligated to provide those RHEL source RPMS to you and me, unless they supplied the binaries to us. And yet, they do. And yet, there is CentOS (and others) that build the whole lot - but you get no paid-for support. Seems very fair and moral to me.
And please don't ignore the fact that you can download installable RHEL *now*, if you so wish and straight from RH. However, if you want timely updates (i.e. support), you have to pay. If they go broke as a result of it, it's their call to make, but what they are doing will be no more or less moral.
> The abundantly transparent purpose behind making RHEL install images "purchase only" is quite obviously to prevent the community from "freeloading" and encourage corporate users to buy licenses instead of using "unofficial" distros like Centos.
I'll be a nitpick here and I'll point out that they are not licences - they are support subscriptions. It is a contract between RH and you about provision of support.
Anyway, yes and so what? Red Hat want to make money (those corporate bastards - all of them :-) and in the process they are financing FOSS. Big deal.
> I find that insulting, frankly.
Oh, come on. Red Hat insulted you by not giving you *more stuff* free of charge?
I'm guessing your argument is probably that they are taking all this software from the community, therefore they are morally obligated to provide it to the community both as binaries and source. Well, you can find all those community codes out there - no need to get them from Red Hat. And it's not like Red Hat is a black hole into which the code disappears.
They haven't taken anything away from anyone. In fact, they contributed *a lot*. So, the moral obligation is on all of us to say thank you, as we already received plenty from them. We don't get to tell them that they have to give us more gifts. That's rude.
>And I find your insensitivity to that fact puzzling.
I'm an old bastard and the thickness of my skin grows daily :-)
Self-described Kubuntu user?
Posted Oct 13, 2006 18:14 UTC (Fri) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
How about you provide engineers, machines, offices and bandwidth for a free, fully supported community distro which will be timely updated for at least 5 years?Red Hat used to do exactly this, of course. And they kicked serious ass and made a lot of money. A few years ago they stopped doing it and now they kick far less ass and seem to be worried about money. Is there a connection? Who knows?
All businesses require investment to get started. You appear skeptical that Canonical will ever make money off Ubuntu... Personally, I would buy their stock if I could. Until I can, I'll just submit bugfixes and patches.
Self-described Kubuntu user?
Posted Oct 13, 2006 21:58 UTC (Fri) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
> Red Hat used to do exactly this, of course. And they kicked serious ass and made a lot of money.
Apparently not: http://lwn.net/Articles/204238/. This is from a person that actually worked there in those days.
> A few years ago they stopped doing it and now they kick far less ass and seem to be worried about money.
I think that's not correct. Red Hat are making more money now than they ever did. Of course they are "worried" about money. That's what companies do - it is the main purpose of their existence.
> All businesses require investment to get started. You appear skeptical that Canonical will ever make money off Ubuntu...
I'm just saying I don't know. In the beginning, when the cash is abundant, things are always easy. We'll see what happens later if/when Mark's cash runs out. Obviously, I haven't seen their books, so I don't know how much money is coming in or going out.
There are less offensive ways
Posted Oct 12, 2006 1:53 UTC (Thu) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]
This kind of tracking is going to get a hostile reception.
I suggest, instead, that the Fedora developers work with the users to design methods of information-gathering that will be more acceptable.
For example, as an alternative, that Fedora ask its users to register, and promote the effort as a way to show Red Hat management how important Fedora is to its users. Something like the Debian popcon is worth doing as well, as long as it is opt-in, not opt-out.
There are less offensive ways
Posted Oct 12, 2006 3:27 UTC (Thu) by branden (guest, #7029) [Link]
Something like the Debian popcon is worth doing as well, as long as it is opt-in, not opt-out.
Not sure if you meant to imply that Debian's
popularity-contest system ("popcon") is opt-in, or merely
that Red Hat/Fedora's "something like" should be, but, for the record:
Debian popcon is opt-in, not opt-out.
There are less offensive ways
Posted Oct 12, 2006 4:05 UTC (Thu) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]
Yes, I know that popcon is opt-in.
There are less offensive ways
Posted Oct 12, 2006 4:18 UTC (Thu) by horen (guest, #2514) [Link]
Something like the Debian popcon is worth doing as well, as long as it is opt-in, not opt-out.
I agree; both with the opt-in, rather than opt-out approach, as well as that it be a mechanism other than Firefox (or similar program).
I never, ever install Firefox (or Thunderbird, or any other non-base-system program) from Fedora Core (the same holds true for my Debian installations). I always go to the programs' home website and download them from there. Always. We have a long-standing tradition of installing 3rd-party/public-domain software in the /usr/local directory structure, whether on a desktop workstation or NFS-mounted from a server, and many/most of us have not and will not change this practice. Some of us sysadmins still prefer, for many reasons, to compile software ourselves, rather than install one which someone else compiled.
I'm with JoeBuck's excellent suggestion. "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem." Thanks for stepping-up and being counted.
There are less offensive ways
Posted Oct 12, 2006 5:49 UTC (Thu) by jamesh (guest, #1159) [Link]
Last time I installed a mozilla.org/mozilla.com Firefox release (a few years back), it sent me to mozilla.org web page the first time I started it up. That sounds quite similar to what the Fedora guys are suggesting.
So installation tracking doesn't seem to be a reason to pick upstream over distribution releases in this particular case ...
There are less offensive ways
Posted Oct 12, 2006 15:08 UTC (Thu) by jstAusr (guest, #27224) [Link]
There is a difference, the image is not visible to the user, that is an active attempt to deceive the user. Gathering information in that way is strange at best. They already have the information from their servers and they know what it costs to provide the service. Using a hidden image isn't going to change anything in a positive way and the counts are still not going to be accurate.
There are less offensive ways
Posted Oct 13, 2006 7:24 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
The huge message around it saying `this is a tracking image, this is whatit is for, this is why we are doing it' would tend to contradict your
little conspiracy theory.
How many Fedora users are there?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 4:50 UTC (Thu) by skvidal (guest, #3094) [Link]
I've read through the comments below and I'm troubled by all the misc deriding comments. This was the rough lifecycle of the idea:
1. person proposes an idea that they didn't think would be a big deal
2. another person counters that it will be a big deal
3. yet another person comes up with a place in between the two that balances out the effectiveness with a much smaller amount of controversiality.
4. the latter idea carries forth.
It seems to me that is EXACTLY how it is all supposed to work.
We want people to propose stuff, have it countered and have a resulting course of action which helps both.
Isn't that what we did here?
-sv
How many Fedora users are there?
Posted Oct 15, 2006 22:19 UTC (Sun) by liljencrantz (guest, #28458) [Link]
Any topic that is even remotely controversial will spawn a small group of very vocal extremists. Take for instance the huge difference between the venomous tone of many comments about dunc-tank on Debian mailing lists and a select number of blogs, and compare that to the outcome of the GR:s on the topic. Turns out that Debian developers in general are a much more reasonable bunch than you'd think from reading debian-devel.
How many Fedora users are there?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 5:11 UTC (Thu) by skvidal (guest, #3094) [Link]
A couple of things about what red hat gets from fedora and why we feel secure in our funding status:
1. Fedora Extras: Extras is massively important to fedora and to RHEL users. Find a RHEL user who hasn't grabbed or wanted to grab a package from extras to satisfy some demand and I'll be SHOCKED to see them. As has been discussed on some public lists folks are working on rebuild of fedora extras packages for RHEL.
2. Fedora devel cycle: The devel cycle that fedora offers is sooo much faster than anything RHEL could or should ever do. Getting to see how the kernel is stabilizing, getting to see what things break in the latest gnome or kde? Getting to draw off the latest and greatest version of the depsolver tools after they've been used and tested by millions of people world wide for months ahead of deployment? That's a huge win. And this is what fedora does.
3. Meta-framework tools: There's so much interesting working going into ways of rolling and maintaining fedora core and extras. So much work going into keeping the community input rolling and involved, lots of thought happening and lots of code being written - this is great.
I think we need a new analogy for what fedora is to rhel. It's not a beta test. It's the space program. When the apollo program was underway there were lots of misc projects that had to happen in order to get everything working. LOTS of them. People worked hard, worked on side projects (like cordless tools and velcro and any number of engineering feats).
Fedora Core is the creation of the rockets to try out for a launch.
Fedora Extras is the set of tools that had to be made and tested for a launch to matter: the spacesuits, the tanks of air and water. The toothpaste-tube steak-sandwich. All of that stuff
The fedora community projects: mock, plague, the voting and account system. These are the cordless tools and velcro and wd-40-like items that got developed in order to make the apollo launch happen.
So if you think of rhel like the launch and you think of fedora like the program necessary to make the launch happen then you realize two things:
1. it's terribly cool to be a part of the apollo program(fedora)
2. there's no way to get to the launch(rhel) w/o the apollo program(fedora)
That's why there's no fear of fedora's funding going away or its interest being derided. It's CRITICAL to getting the RHEL job, done.
-sv
How many Fedora users are there?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 9:09 UTC (Thu) by ewan (subscriber, #5533) [Link]
A couple of things about what red hat gets from fedora and why we feel secure in our funding status
OK; here's the thing - if Fedora feels so secure in its funding status, why the mad rush to gather some user count in a half-arsed manner, right now?
This sort of rushed, known to be lame solution looks like a crisis measure - this reasonably makes people wonder what the crisis is.
How many Fedora users are there?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 13:28 UTC (Thu) by skvidal (guest, #3094) [Link]
Well, to be fair, we've been asked to get some kind of metrics on people using fedora for 3 releases now. We've been using torrent numbers and all sorts of things but never had anything central to work from.
The mirrorlist cgi actually gave us a place where a good portion of the people would want to go where we could get some simplistic counts of people connecting.
It's dramatically better than what we had before and it doesn't give up any personal information.
So, there's no mad rush - we've had 3 releases to do it and never got around to it.
-sv
How many Fedora users are there?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 13:43 UTC (Thu) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]
It would be much smarter PR-wise to package the klive (klive.org) client in Fedora Core and advertise it. Sure it won't give an exact user count but :1. the counting infrastructure is not @redhat, but at a neutral third-party
2. the data gathered can actually be useful to the community at large
3. it's opt-in
4. who cares if a percentage of users slips through ? It'll still give a reasonable order of magnitude
How many Fedora users are there?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 14:30 UTC (Thu) by skvidal (guest, #3094) [Link]
The counting mechanism lives on fedoraproject.org
That's a machine donated by dell and living in a server room at duke university.
I'm not sure how much less 'at red hat' you can get.
:)
-sv
How many Fedora users are there?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 10:35 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Find a RHEL user who hasn't grabbed or wanted to grab a package from extras to satisfy some demand and I'll be SHOCKED to see them.Do my bosses count? (They don't do regular updates, either: they just got bitten by an xattr bug with a fix released in *2003*... maybe this will eventually re-educate them, but I doubt it. Of course these are systems exposed to the Internet, *sigh*...)
How many Fedora users are there?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 7:43 UTC (Thu) by beejaybee (guest, #1581) [Link]
As if the Red Hat people care:
I will not be a Fedora user so long as their installation contains spy bugs or attempts to "phone home" at any time for any reason without my explicit consent.
There are lots of other distributions out there.
If other people react sensibly (as I think I'm doing) then the metrics that the Fedora people want will be easy to obtain - a big fat circle will suffice.
How many Fedora users are there?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 8:25 UTC (Thu) by malor (guest, #2973) [Link]
Businesspeople think in metrics. They want to measure *everything*. That's how they work. Your personal information is not even vaguely interesting to them in this case; all you are is just a '1' in the 'Users' column.
And as they point out in the article, if you've ever used RedHat's update servers, they know you exist already.
They're doing a lot of work in packaging up and debugging the distro... do you really begrudge them that '1'? It's not like Microsoft, where they send back a whole bunch of data about your computer... this is just an existence count.
Yes, I think if it goes to any more data than that, anything even vaguely descriptive about the computer or what's installed or who you are, it should have a consent form. But a totally anonymous existence check seems entirely harmless to me.
What *possible* drawback can this have for you? Is your '1' valuable enough that you'll refuse an entire distro to prevent it?
How many Fedora users are there?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 9:41 UTC (Thu) by NRArnot (subscriber, #3033) [Link]
There's a matter of principle here: they're getting this information in a sneaky underhand way, and some folks (not myself) will object to this so strongly that they'll refuse the distribution. I just think it's not the right thing.
Why not ask the user? Have an installation screen with a choice to be made. Ask "Let Fedora know that I'm running this system" (by default) or "Don't ...". Include a description of exactly what information is obtained if you accept (very little) and why it is helpful to Fedora to know this. And, of course, a corresponding kickstart option.
I don't think many people will refuse, especially since the truth of the statement can be checked with the source code by any paranoid hacker.
How many Fedora users are there?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 13:31 UTC (Thu) by skvidal (guest, #3094) [Link]
Just to be clear - there's no reason to be angry about this.
There will be no tracking image. It is NOT going to be done. It was successfully discarded as an idea for this (and probably any other) release.
The only data we're planning on looking through is apache logs of people connecting to get the mirrorlists for updates of packages.
-sv
How many Fedora users are there?
Posted Oct 19, 2006 23:21 UTC (Thu) by seg (guest, #41224) [Link]
Why is checking the apache log on the mirror list script okay but checking the apache log on an image is SNEAKY AND UNDERHANDED?
Did you know !!!!!!!!!! YOUR COMPUTER IS BROADCASTING AN IP ADDRESS RIGHT NOW !!!!!!!!!
yum-updatesd
Posted Oct 12, 2006 7:55 UTC (Thu) by arjan (subscriber, #36785) [Link]
Unfortunately, yum-updatesd is a broken piece of shit ;(It runs every 100 miliseconds, waking up your cpu from it's power savings and thus costing you actual battery life. I suggest that Fedora doesn't install this thing by default until this bug is fixed (and yes it's in their bugzilla for a while now)
yum-updatesd
Posted Oct 12, 2006 13:25 UTC (Thu) by skvidal (guest, #3094) [Link]
I thought this had been established to be an issue in python, not in yum-updatesd?
yum-updatesd
Posted Oct 12, 2006 14:21 UTC (Thu) by arjan (subscriber, #36785) [Link]
it may be a python bug... but that doesn't change that it's eating battery in a default install..... bad.
yum-updatesd
Posted Oct 12, 2006 14:29 UTC (Thu) by skvidal (guest, #3094) [Link]
but it does change what you say about it though, I'd hope.
yum-updatesd is fairly cool jeremy and luke did some nice work on it and if it were not for the wakeup bug in python I don't think there'd be a mark against it.
-sv
yum-updatesd
Posted Oct 15, 2006 3:30 UTC (Sun) by anonymous21 (guest, #30106) [Link]
Well, I think the most annoying thing about it is that it runs on the background with zero user interaction. When the user tries to launch "Add/Remove Applications" or the system updater from the Applications menu it will work sometimes but not always; you may get a "yum is already running" kind of error dialog. Now think of the user that has no idea that there's a system service running on the background updating yum. What you get is confusion, because this important function of the OS seems to work on a random basis.(It should be possible for these GUI apps to know that it's yum-updatesd that is running and give a better warning; I'll invite you or any other Fedora user to make them this suggestion).
Frankly, this is yet another feature that Fedora/yum gets that we've already been seeing on Ubuntu/apt, and the Fedora/yum way is worse. I'm not trying to troll here, I simply don't understand why Red Hat went with yum instead of APT or smart, both much faster and complete. Does anyone know?
fedora using yum instead of apt
Posted Oct 15, 2006 6:48 UTC (Sun) by scottt (guest, #5028) [Link]
My guess would be multilib (lib64) support and a good relation with upstream.
yum-updatesd
Posted Oct 15, 2006 15:20 UTC (Sun) by skvidal (guest, #3094) [Link]
You're not trying to troll? You posted as anonymous and you're not trying to troll?
The bug you're describing above was in FC6T2 and maybe remaining in T3. It has been fixed in the release version.
Also - when have you last used yum? I think you'll find 3.0 to be a lot faster than anything that came before it.
But you're not trying to Troll, of course not.
</sarcasm>
-sv
yum-updatesd
Posted Oct 15, 2006 17:42 UTC (Sun) by anonymous21 (guest, #30106) [Link]
The last time I used yum was in the "fc6-pre" release, in which the bug I described was still present.
yum-updatesd
Posted Apr 19, 2007 15:44 UTC (Thu) by jqp (guest, #44777) [Link]
Rather than trying to respin the entire comment as a "troll", try addressing the problem. Sarcasm doesn't really help any.
FC6 with all of the latest updates *still* has the problem as originally described. Be it a python bug or not, the fact of the matter is that yum-updatesd is _the_ process that is tickling that bug.
Additionally, the problem with "Yum already running" is definitely true. I bumped in to it right away when I went to update several of the systems. It complained that yum was already running.. after some investigation, I realized that yum-updatesd was running, and, although no other yum process was running, it was still giving a "Yum already running" error.
After killing off yum-updatesd, I was able to run "yum -y update" without any incident.
yum-updatesd
Posted May 24, 2007 3:27 UTC (Thu) by slamb (guest, #1070) [Link]
CentOS 5 (based on RHEL5, based on Fedora Core 6) has the problem also. Disappointing.
Will you be counting Fedora users?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 9:32 UTC (Thu) by chema (subscriber, #32636) [Link]
Counting through Firefox will only give the amount of people that use Fedora's Firefox. I suppose that not everyone that use Fedora use Firefox. Fox example, I do not use Firefox, even I don't remember last time I start Firefox. I use Galeon (and sometimes Opera) instead. How will I be tracked?
(Obviously, I have no concerns of being counted :))
Rgds.
--
Chema
Will you be counting Fedora users?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 14:34 UTC (Thu) by skvidal (guest, #3094) [Link]
You won't be!
There will NOT be a tracking image.
Always about counting transparently
Posted Oct 13, 2006 14:31 UTC (Fri) by quaid (guest, #26101) [Link]
Just to make one other set of things clear:
* For the new release, the Fedora Documentation Project produced a new, useful page at /usr/share/doc/HTML/index.html. This is where the release notes are traditionally displayed. Instead, the new page links to various useful information for (mainly new) users, including the release notes (in all languages available). It was this, already existing page in rawhide/CVS where we were asked to affix a counting image ... and explanation text. No one ever seriously suggested hiding it. In fact, we could have just used a Fedora logo sourced from fedoraproject.org on the page, made no mention that loading the image would *gasp* make a mark in an Apache access log, and no one would have been the wiser. Aren't you glad no one is an evil bastard like that? :)
* Firefox is configured in Fedora to use /usr/share/doc/HTML/index.html as the default homepage. Upgrading users have probably already switched their default homepage.
* The mock-up page that included an image sourced from fedoraproject.org had text wrapped around the image that explained everything, including links to more information, and showed the image as a 10x10 box. Nothing hidden, no secrets.
So, IF the counting image had been implemented, then any Web browser that hit file:///usr/local/doc/HTML/index.html would have pulled down the counting image in a very obvious way.
It was a cheap, easy way to get a very rough idea of desktop usage (no browsers on a non-X using server, right?) as opposed to overall usage. The idea came at the last minute because we had just decided to change /usr/share/doc/HTML between test3 and release, and someone had a brainstorm, "Hey, why don't we just ..." But it was perceived from the very first moment as a potential concern to people without clue who might think it was about nefarious tracking.
The rest of the stuff about funding and such is pure FUD. If you get from the LWN article that "Red Hat is abandoning Fedora AGAIN!", then you failed to read correctly, and certainly didn't read any of the sources for the story. Go back and read the entire set of threads on fedora-docs-list and fedora-advisory-board if you are truly concerned. Otherwise, please don't let reporters for LWN do your thinking for you.
Now, let's get back to worrying about actual privacy concerns.
How many Fedora users are there?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 11:33 UTC (Thu) by liljencrantz (guest, #28458) [Link]
I maintain a package in Fedora Extras, and a few months ago I was curious about how many people used that package, so I asked on the official Fedora maintainres IRC channel if there where any plans to implement some kind of popcon-like functionality. The obvious solution, which was mentioned in the following discussion, was that all package updates would be counted. Logging which packages are updated would give you _loads_ of benefits:
* You can differentiate between mutiple computers using NAT to get the IP by counting the number of times a specific package is updated.
* You can differentiate between desktop systems and servers by what packages they use.
* You can make educated guesses about what software people are running on their system.
* All privacy arguments are pretty moot, IMO. Automatic upgrades is a service given away for free, and you are completely free _not_ to use it if you wish. You opt-in by using yum. Even better, it would be trivial for a security enthusiast to set up a fedora mirror that did not log any downloads.
The big problem that was mentioned with this approach was that most packages are downloaded from various Fedora mirror sites, which do not provide RedHat with download logs. So to get this system working you would have to get a lot of fedora mirrors to send back logs, which might be a hassle. But I still feel this is by far the best way to go.
How many Fedora users are there?
Posted Oct 12, 2006 13:08 UTC (Thu) by jongeek (guest, #39233) [Link]
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.
RedHat do great work
Posted Oct 12, 2006 14:39 UTC (Thu) by Felix_the_Mac (guest, #32242) [Link]
As many people have stated above it seems entirely reasonable for RH to want to have an idea of how many people are using Fedora.
Like many people I don't want to be tracked, but I don't mind being counted.
For example, this could be done by taking a hash of my hard-disk serial number and transmitting it to Redhat when I run software update, this could be stored and my IP address discarded immediately.
As has been pointed out, RedHat (with or without Fedora), hires many great programmers whose code or fixes are all given back to the community under the terms of the GPL.
In particular (IMHO) many thanks to RedHat and Ingo Molnar for the great work that he has been churning out for years. :-)
(BTW, I use Ubuntu)
RedHat do great work
Posted Oct 12, 2006 20:10 UTC (Thu) by roelofs (guest, #2599) [Link]
For example, this could be done by taking a hash of my hard-disk serial number and transmitting it to Redhat when I run software update, this could be stored and my IP address discarded immediately.Indeed--that or the primary ethernet card's MAC address or the combination of the two; whatever is chosen, the point is that the hash is one-way and therefore is useful only as a counting device.
But it sounds like they've decided to use the update service's web logs, which they already have. It may not be as privacy-cloaking (without an additional hashing step, anyway--which may be required in order to comply with European privacy regulations), and it may not be as accurate as a per-machine hash, but it is a form of tracking that anyone using the web should realize is not only already possible but also widely employed by countless companies.
Greg
RedHat do great work
Posted Oct 12, 2006 21:43 UTC (Thu) by skvidal (guest, #3094) [Link]
<i>But it sounds like they've decided to use the update service's web logs, which they already have. It may not be as privacy-cloaking (without an additional hashing step, anyway--which may be required in order to comply with European privacy regulations)</i>
I'm confused here. Are you saying that european privacy regulations do not allow you to read your own apache logs? That's all we're talking about here. We retrieve the logs of the hits against some urls and process the report to see how many unique ips hit that url.
If the european privacy regulations disallow viewing access logs then I cannot imagine how they're functional at all.
-sv
RedHat do great work
Posted Oct 12, 2006 22:09 UTC (Thu) by roelofs (guest, #2599) [Link]
I'm confused here. Are you saying that european privacy regulations do not allow you to read your own apache logs? That's all we're talking about here. We retrieve the logs of the hits against some urls and process the report to see how many unique ips hit that url.Don't read too much into my comment--I'm not European and don't have to deal with European laws myself, so I'm absolutely not an authoritative source of info on this. ;-)
But my understanding is that European privacy law can seem surprisingly strict in some respects to someone used to US law, and if I'm remembering correctly, it touches on things like long-term data retention and security safeguards.
Also, as we've seen in the recent AOL PR disaster, even "anonymized" logs can be seriously problematic, depending on exactly what gets logged. I'm certainly not claiming auto-update web logs are in the same category as search logs, but an IP number coupled with the names of installed packages might be getting close to some threshold--particularly if it can be correlated with other forms of logging (like wiki updates or bugzilla reports).
In short, you're probably OK, but don't take my word for it, either way. Assuming you have any European "customers," you (or someone officially associated with the Fedora project) probably should have at least a vague idea of what the relevant laws require, just as a precaution.
Greg
RedHat do great work
Posted Oct 12, 2006 23:53 UTC (Thu) by skvidal (guest, #3094) [Link]
Just so we're clear on what information we're using:
Yum's default configuration file with fc6 requests a file from a cgi on mirrors.fedoraproject.org. This file is the list of mirrors for the repository
The only information that is passed to the cgi is:
the arch you're using and the version of fedora you're using. That information is passed so it can hand you back a list of valid mirrors closest to your ip range - based on your geographic ip as we got from geoip.
All we're doing is running an awk script across the apache access.log that tells us how many ips connected for each distro/arch.
There's no other information passed at all. No package names, no package lists, no machine info other than the architecture it's running as.
RedHat do great work
Posted Oct 14, 2006 21:15 UTC (Sat) by liljencrantz (guest, #28458) [Link]
Will this tracking be extended in the future to include information on what packages are updated? As a fedora extras maintainer, I'd be very interested in knowing roughly how many people actually use my packages.
RedHat do great work
Posted Oct 15, 2006 15:16 UTC (Sun) by skvidal (guest, #3094) [Link]
There's no tracking doing any of that.
the only thing we're getting information on is when a user contacts the mirror list cgi.
there's no package information contained therein.
-sv
RedHat do great work
Posted Oct 15, 2006 22:10 UTC (Sun) by liljencrantz (guest, #28458) [Link]
Thank you for clarifying. Is there any chance that this will change in the future?
RedHat do great work
Posted Oct 15, 2006 22:27 UTC (Sun) by skvidal (guest, #3094) [Link]
Change how? the structure of things - distributed out to mirrors is extremely prohibitive of this concept.
It's not impossible, but it'd be kinda silly to create a massive SPOF like that.
-sv
RedHat do great work
Posted Oct 15, 2006 22:45 UTC (Sun) by liljencrantz (guest, #28458) [Link]
Sorry, I was unclear. I didn't mean to suggest that the mirror distribution method should change. What I meant to ask was if the lack of information about what packages are downloaded could change in the future, since I, as an Extras maintainer, am curious about the number of users my package has.
This would probably imply that mirrors would need to send back some form of server logs to RH.
RedHat do great work
Posted Oct 16, 2006 4:07 UTC (Mon) by skvidal (guest, #3094) [Link]
speaking as a mirror for 6+ years I can assure you that getting the mirrors to feed back log information would be like pulling teeth.
painful and bloody.
-sv
Ubuntu phone home
Posted Oct 13, 2006 14:30 UTC (Fri) by jwpalmieri (subscriber, #4741) [Link]
I use kubuntu. When I first installed it I was fixing the configurationand saw the following in ntp.conf:
server ntp.ubuntu.com
Clearly this is either an ntp server or pool (like pool.ntp.org - thanks
Ask!). Yet, my first thought was maybe this could be used as a "counter"
of Ubuntu users...
Ubuntu phone home
Posted Oct 13, 2006 18:18 UTC (Fri) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
Also, the system updater pings the repos every few hours looking for updates. It would not be hard to turn this into a very accurate user counter. Heck, just counting the DNS hits for us.archive.ubuntu.com should give you a strong indicator of the number of US users.
How many Fedora users are there?
Posted Oct 14, 2006 18:43 UTC (Sat) by sharkscott (guest, #38015) [Link]
What ever happened to just asking? Seriously.
"Hi, Fedora/SuSE/Debian/Ubuntu here, we were wondering if you would tell us if you use our software or not."
If you respect me enough to ask me to my face, so to speak, I will give you my honest answer.
How many Fedora users are there?
Posted Oct 19, 2006 6:37 UTC (Thu) by hofhansl (guest, #21652) [Link]
I'm using Fedora. I have been very happy with it, and hence would recommend (and have recommended) RHEL to any business type setting.
I would have no problem if the default homepage of FireFox points to some Fedora site for tracking, or allow my ip address to be tracked when I download updates via YUM.
I would object to any other form of built in tracking, though.
Of course I use Fedora as a base, I regularly build/patch my own Kernel, Firefox, PostgreSQL, GCC, install my own Eclipse, OpenOffice, JDK, JBoss/Geronimo, etc, etc.
With every new version of Fedora I found less need to tinker with common things myself, however, and I like that; it allows me focus on my work at hand.
You do use websites don't you?
Posted Oct 23, 2006 4:55 UTC (Mon) by NitKamly (guest, #41256) [Link]
I do find this very amusing - all the fuss that is.
I suspect the vast majority of people making the fuss have little to no idea just how very pervasive tracking is right across the entire web internet.
Its done with logs, javascript, flash, images, text blah blah blah.
There are tools that draw heat maps of where visitors click on a site irregardless of whether a link is there or not. And the datamining tools that marketing folk use to plumb that info are incredible. And expensive.
Fedora puts a simple image up and it's cry foul. Fire up adblock in firefox sometime and have a long hard look at just how *much* tracking is being done against you practically everywhere you go. Then come and complain.
Storm in a teacup IMHO.
nk