thoughts on LWN "how many Fedora users are there"

[Les Mikesell]

On Fri, 2006-10-13 at 08:18, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> > 
> >> We probably dont have to coordinate all these before FC6 release but I 
> >> believe some of the mirrors would be willing to provide access logs to 
> >> calliberate metrics.
> > 
> > Why don't you add a repository that holds a small optional
> > file just for tracking purposes?  If someone really doesn't
> > want to be counted they could remove the repository reference
> > and since there wouldn't be a lot of traffic you could
> > use a few servers where you have access to the logs.  Personally
> > I think it would be nice if this file itself would be updated
> > with the count of accesses on a monthly basis so anyone
> > participating in the process has access to the result.
> 
> The problem is not the access point but the distributed nature of the 
> mirrors. We currently dont have any idea about how many hits the 
> different mirrors get and adding specific files wont add any specific 
> value at all.

Yes, that's why I said 'add a repository' above.  If you have
a few reliable machines that you control, don't use any others
as mirrors.  It shouldn't be a big load to serve one file
that changes once a month - and it gives the users an easy
way to opt out if they feel that being counted violates
their privacy.  My personal feeling is that as long as everyone
knows the result it is not an issue for me.  I might have a
problem with it if some other group collected my information
and withheld it from everyone else.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
   lesmikesell at gmail.com