Firefox splash page tracker

[Karsten Wade]

On Tue, 2006-10-03 at 14:52 -0400, Greg DeKoenigsberg wrote:
> 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.

Where you == 95% of the Fedora contributors.

> > 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.

Chicken and egg situation, as usual.  We need the resources to do the
work to show that we need the resources.

When all the incorrect privacy concerns are out of the way, this is how
the whole situation reads to me.  I suspect others agree;

<how it looks from outside of the supposed-cabal>
  "There are some number crunchers somewhere who think that the value
  that Fedora is getting out of Red Hat is *greater* than the value that
  Red Hat is getting out of Fedora.  So, they are making it incumbent
  upon Fedora to prove its worth before they will approve more funds for
  Fedora."
</>

Folks who contribute to and use Fedora have the impression that Fedora
is the unloved stepchild of RHEL, right?  I think this action is easily
perceived by Fedorans that we need to forget our concerns and once again
do for Red Hat what Red Hat should have been doing for itself.

Bottom line -- if it is so important for Red Hat to know what the Fedora
metrics are, Red Hat should be investing some FTE time into generating
these metrics.  Instead, Red Hat is telling Fedora to get off its butt
and prove its own worth.

Bottom line ^2 -- Max, it is a sad state of things that you do have to
turn to the community to accept and do this.  Where is your army of
flying monkeys to do your bidding?

I say all this as a person in a position to know better, to have a real
idea how important and central Fedora is to Red Hat.  It is painfully
obvious to all that when *anyone* at Red Hat who works on Fedora gets
the RHEL siren call, they respond.  We say and know that Fedora is
important, but when it comes time to prove that, we ask Fedora to prove
it for us.

Even for Red Hat, denial is not a river in Egypt.

> > 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.

Survey == choice
Click here == choice
Tracker PNG == no choice

That is the difference in methods here.  The quality of the data is
secondary.
 
> > 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*.

Sorry we didn't think of this simple solution early enough to gain some
consensus.

I have other concerns we do not have time to resolve:

* The text is going to be untranslated.  We actually had another chance
to get this translated, if this thread had been resolved on Saturday.
Thus, our warning is going to be unreadable by a % of our userbase.

* The text and image is going to stay there forever, each time someone
loads the page.  Forget the polluted data quality, it's going to signal
"Fedora are asses" every time someone loads that page.

* Our privacy policy is incomplete (separate email to f-a-b about that
forthcoming)

* Fedora leadership is going to take some heat, but in the end, all of
the hard work and hard hassle is going to be felt by non-Red Hat and Red
Hat contributors on the ground.

All righty, I think I have gotten all my concerns and feelings off my
chest.

It is obvious to me now that an order has been given, so we're going to
go ahead and proceed with this plan:

1. Include text as proposed in this thread in
the /usr/share/doc/HTML/index.html

2. Finish the privacy policy and link that in

3. Figure out at feedback mechanism and link that in

Since the folks who worked on these parts have voiced their opposition,
and I have already honored that in this thread, I'll personally do all
the work to make this happen before Jesse spins the ISO.

- Karsten
-- 
Karsten Wade, RHCE, 108 Editor    ^     Fedora Documentation Project 
 Sr. Developer Relations Mgr.     |  fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject
   quaid.108.redhat.com           |          gpg key: AD0E0C41
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