What I would like to see, or "How many FreeBSD boxen are out there?"

[User Freebsd]

On Sun, 23 Jul 2006, jan gestre wrote:

> On 7/23/06, User Freebsd <freebsd at hub.org> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> On various lists, including this one, there is talk about how to we make
>> hardware vendors sit up and take more notice of us ... alot of the
>> negative responses back seem to be 'we are too small of a group', but, of
>> couse, nobody out there can really give any even *reasonable* numbers of
>> desktops and servers deployed with FreeBSD ...
>> 
>> What I'd love to see is a *project initiated* (or FreeBSD Foundation)
>> FreeBSD reporting mechanism similar to:
>>
>>                 http://www.mreriksson.net/uptimes/myuptimes
>> 
>> Something just for FreeBSD users (well, all *BSD users should be invited)
>> ... uptime not being the really big thing here, but stuff like version of
>> FreeBSD being run, country being run in, maybe have it part dmesg on
>> startup and report devices in use, etc ...
>> 
>> Come up with reports like # of hosts using fxp vs em devices, etc ...
>> although it may be a bit more difficult, I don't know, but report on
>> specific hardware being used ...
>> 
>> Statistics that either Core, or the FreeBSD Foundation, can use to show
>> vendors they are talking to about what is currently in use ... but also to
>> show developers themselves what device drivers are actually in use, that
>> sort of thing ...
>> 
>> Nothing that I'd think would be 'sensitive information', but information
>> that would be useful from either a marketing, or support, point of view
>> ...
>> 
>> And market / promote it ...
>> 
>> Basically, unless I'm mistaken, right now we have *nothing* to base
>> numbers on, except maybe the netcraft report(s)? ... but, that only
>> includes hosts running web servers ... how many are running firewalls?
>> desktops?  mail servers?  etc ...
>> 
>> We need to show vendors we aren't some "hobbiest group", and towards that
>> end, producing some sort of up to date #s would really help, I would think
>> ... show them we are a market worth looking at ...
>>

> why not make something similar to the linux counter, and let users 
> register and have their registration number.

The point of the link I sent above, or other similar systems, is that its 
relatively self-maintaining ... you register a server/desktop with the 
system, as being 'owned' by you, and run a small client that polls the 
system periodically ...

If the server gets taken offline, it automatically gets marked as being an 
inactive host ... I don't know how linux counter works, but any system 
where someone has to go to a web site to "remove a host" if it gets taken 
offline is inherently flawed from the started since a) what stops ppl from 
just adding hosts with nothing to back them?  and b) most of us are too 
lazy to bother going to mark as being 'offline'


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