FreeBSD not popular in Asia?

[Marc G. Fournier]

On Thu, 28 Sep 2006, Oliver Fromme wrote:

>
> Marc G. Fournier wrote:
> > Oliver Fromme wrote:
> > > By the way, I've got a small question.  Does the database
> > > throw all entries away at the end of each month, and start
> > > all over again with zero entries?  Or is each entry expired
> > > after a certain time has elapsed (31 days or whatever)?
> >
> > Neither ... the month that the report was submitted for has one entry for
> > host ... we'll be able to graph stuff like growht in # of reporting hosts
> > and such ...
>
> I'm not sure that will work well ...  Lets see what happens
> when October begins.  At the beginning of September, the
> statistics were all reset to zero.

That is correct ... this is one of my hosts:

   id  |            unique_key             | country_code |       first_connect 
-----+-----------------------------------+--------------+----------------------------
   235 | cdd6a5011ac543400bcaafb413ae577d  | PA           | 2006-08-15 06:53:50.077533

And this is what its reported for so far:

   id  | operating_system |   release   | architecture |        report_month 
-----+------------------+-------------+--------------+----------------------------
   235 | FreeBSD          | 4.11-STABLE | i386         | 2006-08-15 07:08:50.694954
   235 | FreeBSD          | 4.11-STABLE | i386         | 2006-09-01 08:30:06.198988
(2 rows)

One for August, one for September ... start of October, a third entry will 
be added ...

> Sorry, I was a bit unclear ...  I didn't mean to say that you shouldn't 
> collect the numbers for each OS sub-variant (or lets call it 
> "distribution") separately.  But I think it would make sense to group 
> them together for the "Big 4" on the front page (main page) at 
> bsdstats.org.

Except those that are working hard on the various 'sub-variants' are proud 
to see the fact that the work they are doing is being used, plus, it helps 
to advertise those sub-variants, so that ppl know they are out there ...

> By the way, I think you cannot tell much from those numbers, because 
> they don't really show any real-world usage of the various BSD variants. 
> Not now, and not in a year from now. The reason for that is that the 
> different BSD projects have very different policies for enabling the 
> bsdstats script by default during installation or during update.

The thing is, we're not looking at producing a "this is all the BSD hosts 
that are out there" sort of number ... we are trying to produce a "see, 
there *is* a BSD market" ... what does some place like Adaptec consider a 
"market", that I don't know ... 100k hosts?  500k hosts?  I don't know 
that, each manufacturer (both software and hardware) will have different 
thresholds ... the point is that we now have *some* marketing numbers that 
aren't "purely guesswork" ...

Hell, even looking at the numbers now ... 10,328 hosts, 42.2% of which are 
OpenBSD ... 4 362 hosts doesn't sound like alot, but those are 4 362 hosts 
that will *never* see an Adaptec controller because of Adaptec's 
closed-doc policy ... what's the average price of an Adaptec controller 
nowadays?  Looking at there site, their SAS RAID controller is SRP: $995 
... that is $4 340 190 in potential revenu *if* everyone bought that card 
... even if average price was $100, that is $436 200 in potential revenue 
that can't be tap'd ... and that number is probably not even 1/10th of the 
actual # of hosts out there ...

And ya, I know, not everyone would by Adaptec even if they had open docs 
... that isn't the point ... the point is that Adaptec is getting *zero* 
right now from the OpenBSD market, since they are closed docs ...

> By the way (apropos default policies):  Guess why OpenBSD has gotten 
> ahead of FreeBSD in the statistics?  It has been growing at a much higer 
> rate all the time, and will continue to do so.  Soon the statistics will 
> "prove" that OpenBSD's user base is ten times larger than FreeBSD's, 
> because we won't have a bsdstats option in sysinstall in 6.2-Release. 
> I'd be willing to submit a patch (I'm somewhat familiar with the 
> sysinstall code), but I assume it's too late because we're already in 
> code freeze, and sysinstall is a particularly critical piece of code. 
> Apart from that, such a patch will probably be shredded to pieces by 
> bike shed discussions.

Of course, not submitting the patch ASAP will ensure that not only do it 
not getting into 6.2-RELEASE, but it won't get into subsequent releases, 
or -CURRENT, or ... :)

> *sigh* I'm sorry, what I wrote isn't really constructive, but rather 
> bellyaching about the whole situation.  Maybe I should better shut up 
> now.  :-)

I got tired of bellyaching, and created bsdstats.org ... *shrug*

----
Marc G. Fournier           Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
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