Re: gnome-about-me

[Rob Adams <readams readams net>]

John Williams wrote:

> Notwithstanding that, how will those data enable us to estimate the
> number of GNOME users worldwide?  If we can do that already, I want to
> know about it, otherwise I am wasting my time (and that of others) here.
>  
I agree wholeheartedly that you're wasting your time.

If you'd care to explain how this feature will enable us to estimate the 
number of gnome users worldwide I would be very happy to hear it.  The 
crucial bit of data, percentage of users who enable the checkbox, will 
be unavailable.  Of course it will give you a lower bound, but so will 
any number of methods already discussed.

If you want to use the popularity-contest information to make an 
estimate which is just as bad as the one we could make with this 
"feature":  take percentage of debian popularity-contest users who have 
GNOME installed.  Multiply by percentage of debian users with 
popularity-contest installed.  Multiply by debian market share.  
Multiply by linux desktop market share.  Multiply by number of internet 
users.

Note that in this chain, all the numbers can actually be estimated, 
unlike the crucial "percentage of users with the count me feature 
enabled".  The second one (percentage of debian users with 
popularity-contest) could be estimated by analyzing server logs on 
debian update servers when a new version of the popularity-contest 
package is released, and track the percentage of users performing 
updates who also download the new package (this isn't perfect, but its 
at least a good approximation, though there is likely bias in the 
frequency of user updates and liklihood to have popularity-contest 
installed).

The other numbers (the market share numbers) are available from any 
number of research firms, and all have their own problems in determining 
it.  And of course the total number of internet users is at best a 
guess, but we can leave out that step and just use a percentage.

-Rob