I must be doing something seriously wrong...

[Adam Williamson]

On Thu, 2009-05-21 at 15:33 -0400, Seth Vidal wrote:

> > 1: a lot of that 1/6th of the world's population does not own a
> > computer. Or an internet connection. (Or, in many cases, a reliable
> > electricity supply). Let's not have any illusions about China: it
> > contains a huge amount of people, but a rather smaller amount of
> > possible potential Fedora users.

> http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/145108/china_tops_us_for_internet_population_lead.html
> 
> 228million people in china with internet access.
> 
> That's 2/3rd the population of the United states and 8million more 
> internet accessing people than the US.

The Chinese government body providing that number uses a rather lax
standard:

"CNNIC defines a user as anyone who uses the Internet at least once per
month for any function."

That does not require that the person has consistent access to the
internet connection (which is close to a necessity for using Fedora). It
also doesn't require that the internet connection be attached to a
personal computer; any cellphone with a data connection satisfies that
definition.

I would suspect a large amount of the 228m are made up of people who own
cellphones (but not, necessarily, personal computers - in Africa, for
instance, many people own cellphones who could never afford a computer
or a regular internet connection, I would not be surprised if this were
the same in some areas of China), or people with access to shared
facilities (universities or internet cafes).

> Let's not underestimate this market, shall we?

Pet peeve: it's not a market, for us. We're not trying to sell them
anything, after all. To RHEL, it's a market. To Fedora, it's a potential
user / contributor base. As you were :)
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net