Don Marti

Tue 12 Oct 2010 09:12:51 AM PDT

News flash: Linux freaks love Linux!

The Linux Foundation has done a "Hands Up, Who Likes Me?" survey, and Glyn Moody covers it. "[I]t's telling us about the views and intentions of a very particular group - those already using GNU/Linux in their company - and not offering a statement about wider future trends for GNU/Linux for businesses in general."

But, really, LF doesn't include anything about how it chose the "invitation-only survey pool". Who are these people? Impossible to tell from the report, but there are two small clues: 37.5% of the people who completed the survey "test and submit bugs," which is much higher than the best guesses for business Linux users in general. And 13.4% "actively contribute code," which is way high. So this appears to be not just "those already using GNU/Linux" but a bunch of committed Linux users and contributors. They're saying, yes, we made the right choice. And if you contribute to a project, how would you respond to a question about whether quality is going up or down?

The report does mention that 387 of 1948 respondents represent companies with revenues of $500 million or greater, or more than 500 employees, but their answers are mixed in with the rest. How many of the "We're using desktop Linux" answers are from the CIO of Mom's Basement?

When proprietary OS vendors have done reports based on polling their own partners and ISVs, the Linux crowd has responded mostly with, "haha FAIL." Can LF do better? I'm having trouble understanding the point of this kind of report.