Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 01:11:00 -0700 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: "Karl Agee" <kdagee2@yahoo.com>, "newbies" <freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG>, "Tri-City Linux user group" <3clug@tricity.wsu.edu> Subject: RE: ammo to take to the boss... Message-ID: <001801c109e1$058b6e80$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <3B4B3AE0.46F29DBB@yahoo.com>
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First, please CC the Advocacy list with this stuff! Second, I think the article is an excellent paper for "presenting to the boss" it is every bit as good as the papers that Sun puts out that say Solaris is the most popular, and the papers that Microsoft puts out that say that Microsoft is the most popular, etc. However the paper does have a fatal flaw that all of these kinds of whitpapers have. It cites study after study but it does not (for the most part) cite who comissioned the study, and who bankrolls the group doing the study. With commercial market surveys of these type, most of the so-called "market research" firms that do them have 1 of 2 goals. First, they are doing the study under comission by a client. Naturally, the study is going to arrive at the conclusions that the client wants. The whole point of paying the market research firm is to be able to cite them as proof that the study your waving around to your prospective customers is legitimate. The second goal is that the market research firm does a study with the hope of peddling it to someone in the industry. For example they might do a study that comes to the conclusion that "BSD is the fastest growing OS used in embedded systems" then post a synopsis of it. Their goal in that case would be to peddle the details of the study to someone like Wind River. All of the market research firm studies cited in the article are basically propaganda devices that are useless. The reason is that if you contact each of those firms they will not release the names of who they actually surveyed. Thus there is no way for a 3rd party to audit the study, by checking with some of the users that the research firm communicated with to find out if the surveyed users really and truly said what the study claims they said. In summary, the research firms all claim to be statistically scientific but they don't publish any way of being able to repeat the study and arrive at the same conclusions that they did. Without the ability to have repeatibility the information isn't factual or verifyable. Also without knowing where the money came from that funded the study, it's impossible to determine if there was any bias that affected the results of the study. Ted Mittelstaedt tedm@toybox.placo.com Author of: The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide Book website: http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com >-----Original Message----- >From: owner-freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG >[mailto:owner-freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG]On Behalf Of Karl Agee >Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2001 10:27 AM >To: newbies; Tri-City Linux user group >Subject: ammo to take to the boss... > > >So your boss doesnt think linux or freebsd can "cut it" and he believes >the microsoft fud that "nobody uses linux" or other open-source os's??? >Take a look at this article which is a compliation of all the studies >done in the last few years including the fud from redmond: > >http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html > >--karl > >_________________________________________________________ >Do You Yahoo!? >Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com > > >To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org >with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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