From owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Nov 4 02:50:22 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C3611106567F for ; Tue, 4 Nov 2008 02:50:22 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from tim@clewlow.org) Received: from clewlow.org (clewlow.org [210.215.149.194]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 28B588FC18 for ; Tue, 4 Nov 2008 02:50:21 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from tim@clewlow.org) Received: from 192.168.1.100 (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by clewlow.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0DCFC1C0851; Tue, 4 Nov 2008 13:31:35 +1100 (EST) Received: from 192.168.1.13 (SquirrelMail authenticated user tim) by 192.168.1.100 with HTTP; Tue, 4 Nov 2008 13:31:35 +1100 (EST) Message-ID: <66f8907fb3b0da766ce4aad67d2783a8.squirrel@192.168.1.100> In-Reply-To: <2a7894eb0811031601h3ed4c41flf0bc90679da62ecd@mail.gmail.com> References: <47BB6151991A555176831AB5@ganymede.hub.org> <02fb01c93e09$b011e3c0$1035ab40$@com> <2a7894eb0811031601h3ed4c41flf0bc90679da62ecd@mail.gmail.com> Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2008 13:31:35 +1100 (EST) From: "Tim Clewlow" To: "Murray Stokely" User-Agent: SquirrelMail/1.4.15 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) Importance: Normal Cc: "Marc G. Fournier" , freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Re: BSDstats: New High Water Mark: 25 000+ Hosts Reporting In X-BeenThere: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: FreeBSD Evangelism List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 04 Nov 2008 02:50:22 -0000 > [BCCed others] > > On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 3:12 PM, Don Witt > wrote: >> This is very cool. What is up with NetBSD and OpenBSD. Are these >> numbers >> accurate? > > These numbers represent the number of people that have installed a > program to report usage, and are almost completely uncorrelated with > actual usage rates. > > If you want to get better numbers you could try to survey all web > servers on the internet, identify the host operating systems by > server > responses, tcp/ip timing characteristics, or other heuristics. You > could alternatively mine google analytics / webserver log data for > large websites if you want client numbers, or countless other data > sources that would give you far more data than this self reporting > mechanism, and with a much better sample than the very biased > mechanism used for these numbers. > Or count the number of systems that call home, ie count the number of different IP addresses that talk to the *BSD servers to install or update themselves. Tim.