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[Greg DeKoenigsberg]

On Tue, 3 Oct 2006, Sam Folk-Williams wrote:

> I guess my question is, how could this have happened? How could nothing
> have been gathered in all this time? Also, why did this just now become
> an urgent thing?

Just because it's a new problem to you doesn't mean that it's a new 
problem.  It just means that it's a new problem to you.
 
> Right so this should be on track for FC7 - any time really.

So great.  We've got a great idea for FC7.  I think it'll be great to
write a firstboot extension that allows us to collect all kinds of spiffy
data.  Maybe we can get some community resources to help make it happen --
because we can't necessarily count on internal dedicated resources.  

It's worth pointing out at this point that we also had a great idea for
FC4 *and* FC5 -- redirecting yum requests through bouncer and collecting
stats that way.  But we didn't execute.  Why?  Because it wasn't judged to
be important enough to expend resources to *make* it happen.

It's all about execution.  We do what we have with what we've got.  Ideas 
and promises are great, but they don't feed the bulldog.  And when we ask 
for MORE FUNDING TO MAKE FEDORA BETTER, and the Powers That Be ask, "well, 
how many Fedora users do you have?" and we have NO ANSWER, that is BAD FOR 
FEDORA.  BAAAAAAAD.  

AND I'M SORRY FOR SHOUTING... but I guess I just can't help it.  It's
frustrating.  I'll go stand in the corner now and suck my thumb until I 
feel better.

> But, can you really count on this data for anything useful? I mean, I
> think a lot of people install several distributions just to check them
> out when they are first released, for example, but may not have any
> intention of actually /using/ it long term. Does that count as a user?

It's certainly much better than what we have right now, which is 
*literally nothing at all*.  How many times do we have to reiterate this 
point?
 
> Why don't we start to prepare some kind of survey of people who are
> registered at various fedora-related sites now? I don't know that it has
> to correspond with a release.

I guess I don't understand what makes you think that survey data will be 
anywhere near as accurate.

I mean, here's some simple back-of-the-envelope calculations:

How many people who install Fedora actually join a Fedora mailing list, or
go to a Fedora website?  20 percent?  5 percent?  On the other hand: how
many Fedora Desktop users open a browser?  75 percent?  90 percent?
 
> On the other hand, if you really think this idea will give you data you
> can trust and urgently need, it might well be worth it to go ahead. I
> just personally think this feels a bit cobbled together.

We had great, large plans, as early as FC4.  Grand plans.  Beautiful 
plans.  What happened?  We did not execute.

Therefore, we dropped back to the *simplest possible plan* that would give 
us *any data at all*.

--g

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