[osol-mktg] OpenSolaris Download Statistics ?

[patrick finch]

> BTW, we learned today in the bloggers meeting is that we should NOT
publish  number of "hits" to a website but rather should publish the
number of "page  views".  My mistake on my Highlights report last week.
 I got the number right,
> but I should have referred to them as "Page Views".

That's my fault - the numbers I gave you were "page views"...but I
didn't relate to that name.

I don't know what the outcome of your discussion with Simon on the
downloads number is.

>From my perspective, think that the question is motivated by curiousity
and it is not driving any behaviour other than giving the audience a
sense of momentum.  Or to put it another way, the answer to the question
"do you know how many downloads there have been?" is "no", but
explaining the reasons for this is presumably of interest to the audeince.

For those reasons I like Derek's suggestion below, but I would like
better to understand the BT figure: how is it arrived at?  I'd want to
call it an estimate if that is what it is, and estimate for all BT
downloads, not just those hosted by Sun, stating assumptions and
reasoning.  As long as your thought process has integrity, I think that
this is entirely justifiable.  (to give an idea of what I mean, could we
identify if we simulate a BT download how many times we touch a
Sun-served file?  If we could, we could extrapolate from the Sun-served
number, etc.)

Derek -we'll talk early after the break, let's cover this too?

regards

Patrick



Claire Giordano wrote:
> Simon and I plan to talk about this a bit this afternoon.  Please hold off on 
> publishing the numbers UNTIL he and I have touched base.
> 
> However, if anyone wants to go ahead and post the question - about how to track 
> BitTorrent downloads - that would be great.
> 
> BTW, we learned today in the bloggers meeting is that we should NOT publish 
> number of "hits" to a website but rather should publish the number of "page 
> views".  My mistake on my Highlights report last week.  I got the number right, 
> but I should have referred to them as "Page Views".
> 
> Claire
> 
> Derek Cicero wrote:
> 
> 
>>Simon is correct. We can know how many people we have serviced, but the 
>>appeal of BitTorrent is that people may not get the file from us, and 
>>therefore can't be tracked by us. The community undestands this and I 
>>think we provide the numbers that we have.
>>
>>I would propose posting this to the 'discuss' list:
>>
>>The number of downloads for the OpenSolaris Source, as of 06/30/2005:
>>
>>SDLC: 4,605
>>GENUNIX: 1,585
>>BitTorrent: 1,000+ *
>>Total: Over 7,000 files
>>
>>*Files served by Sun
>>
>>Derek
>>
>>Sara Dornsife wrote:
>>
>>
>>>That needs to be explained to the community then. We can't just not 
>>>tell people the download stats. Especially after being asked 
>>>specifically for them. In fact, maybe we should ask the community to 
>>>help us solve our counting issue? Would that work?
>>>Sara
>>>
>>>
>>>Claire Giordano wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>To be clear - I do not want to publish download numbers at all, 
>>>>unless the numbers are complete.
>>>>
>>>>Unfortunately, if we publish a subset of the numbers and state they 
>>>>are a subset, most people will not remember the caveat and yet will 
>>>>remember the numbers, or their "small|medium|large" perception of the 
>>>>numbers.  It won't be accurate and it could create a misperception 
>>>>about the momentum and interest.  I don't see what's in it for us.
>>>>
>>>>Of course, if we could track BT and the mirrors, that would be great.
>>>>
>>>>Claire
>>>>
>>>>Karyn Ritter wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>Claire Giordano wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>I don't want to distribute download numbers that are potentially 
>>>>>>very misleading.  I'd rather not share download #s all if they're 
>>>>>>not complete and if we don't know if they represent 10% or 90% of 
>>>>>>the actual number of downloads.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Derek - do you agree with Simon's assessment below?  Since you were 
>>>>>>proposing to share download numbers (and had provided them last 
>>>>>>week to Laura), I'm wondering if you know of some magical way to 
>>>>>>track downloads from mirrors and BT?  Do you?
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>Just my $.02... I agree that we should only publish the numbers we 
>>>>>can track and state that they are a subset. Should we also provide a 
>>>>>pointer to the download numbers the mirrors publish?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>p.s.  Just saw email from Tom Gryder complimenting on a great 
>>>>>>report about OpenSolaris download statistics.  Who provided that, 
>>>>>>and when?  I just searched my mail for downloads in the topic and 
>>>>>>glanced thru emails from Derek and Karyn and didn't find it.  I'm 
>>>>>>sure it's there, but would be much obliged if you could forward a 
>>>>>>copy?  And, we need to figure out who in engineering Patrick should 
>>>>>>confer with on stats - don't want our teams to be sending out 
>>>>>>conflicting info.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>We directed him to get his download statistics from SDLC, and I'm 
>>>>>sure that is what he did.
>>>>>
>>>>>- Karyn
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>>

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