Re: Metrics: RFC

[David Woodhouse <dwmw2 infradead org>]

On Mon, 2006-11-27 at 15:44 -0500, Bill Nottingham wrote:
> David Woodhouse (dwmw2 infradead org) said: 
> > On Mon, 2006-11-27 at 14:21 -0500, Bill Nottingham wrote:
> > > I've gotten some mail from outside users directly to me about this after
> > > they read the wiki - do we want to have a specific pointer about where
> > > on the lists to discuss on the wiki page?
> > 
> > The totally unrealistic "20% of time; 1% of users" figure seems to have
> > been quoted already. Can we rephrase that and hold off on the PPC
> > witch-hunt please?
> 
> Huh?

http://lwn.net/Articles/211152/ quotes it thus:

>> 'Back in October, LWN covered Fedora's need for metrics on how many
>> people are using the distribution. The project has now put up a page
>> on possible data collection techniques with a request for comments.
>> Quite a few different approaches are being considered. "The fact is
>> that metrics are important for anyone trying to do something with
>> limited resources. It allows us to put what little resources we do
>> have to better use. If the developers spend 20% of their time
>> debugging PPC and our metrics show that they are 1% of our install
>> base, the argument could be made that less time needs to be spent on
>> PPC."'


There's enough FUD about what a support burden PPC is already; we don't
have to contribute to it with stuff like the above. The 20% figure is
completely unrealistic, and we all know it -- the fact that it's
presented as a hypothetical example doesn't really excuse the fact that
it's given so prominently and quotably.

Hence the request for it to be rephrased.

-- 
dwmw2