thoughts on LWN "how many Fedora users are there"

[Arthur Pemberton]

On 10/17/06, Doru Georgescu <headset001 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> "What is simple is also beautiful and reliable." - my father, a
> building engineer.
>
> I believe that the open source and open mirror strategy are simply
> too good to be modified even for tracking only. The Mozilla home page
> tracking strategy seems simple and safe to me.
>
> However, as an end user, I would like to know what is going on on my
> system, what info you gather, and what amount of my system's
> resources are used for this end. An Internet page, I believe, would
> provide an easy opportunity for Fedora to inform its end users about
> this.
>
> Thank you,
> Doru
>
>

Why not go the more traditional, and transparent route? A registration page/app.

Have a Python app (both CLI and GUI) and have it run as part of first
boot, and have it always available. Have it generate an extremely
random number (on the other of 16^32). Then give the user the option
to register with Fedora, distrowatch, Linux User Counter, or any
combination, or just dismiss it totally.

What is the flaw in that stradegy?

I'm all for getting metrics, but why such a complicated solution?

Peace.

-- 
Fedora Core 5 and proud