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Re: [LUG] stats on Linux market share

 

On Fri, 16 Jan 2009 15:10:22 +0000
Paul Sutton <zleap@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Looking at the article a while back on the OU being challenged to use 
> OSS,  It stated somewhere in that that Linux only has a 1% market share, 
> 
> this to me seems rather low,  I just wondered if anyone had any real 
> upto date stats we can use when promoting OSS,  as it really helps when 
> people try to say no one uses it, or similar to quote real stats on usage.

This is a repeating thread on many mailing lists - it's cropped up
AGAIN on the debian-devel list for the umpteenth time.

The problems are these:
1. Free software cannot restrict downloads in order to use accurate
counting methods.
2. Many developers create test installations and other debugging
systems that are quickly erased but these cannot be easily distinguished
from other installations that actually have real users. (This is
deliberate as the testing requires that the test system is as close to
the real system as possible.)
3. Many people maintain local mirrors of multiple package sets.
4. Most distributions contain some method of polling users about the
packages installed but being free software, all these methods can (and
frequently are) turned off.
5. Nobody has any idea how many machines out there are running the
Linux kernel so anything based on percentages is guesswork
6. Even the existing counting systems (e.g. linuxcounter openly admit
that their figures are based on pure guesswork.
7. Basing figures on any one piece of software excludes massive numbers
of other installations that use different software - not even the
kernel can be used or you'll exclude most BSD people and those still
warrant consideration in the "free software" economy. It's a mistake to
look for figures on the "Linux market share".

There is no way of knowing any kind of "share" because the software is
free - not just price but freedom to modify and therefore opt-out of
all call-home routines. There are very good reasons for this to be
rigorously enforced - call-home software that cannot be easily
disabled is evil.

-- 


Neil Williams
=============
http://www.data-freedom.org/
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/
http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/

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