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Date:      Fri, 26 Feb 1999 09:22:22 +1030
From:      Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>
To:        jgrosch@mooseriver.com, Allen Campbell <allenc@verinet.com>
Cc:        Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Commercial Tripwire available for Linux, not FreeBSD
Message-ID:  <19990226092222.K431@lemis.com>
In-Reply-To: <19990224230455.A11162@ontario.mooseriver.com>; from Josef Grosch on Wed, Feb 24, 1999 at 11:04:56PM -0800
References:  <199902250340.UAA22559@usr07.primenet.com> <36D4D0A7.A1CA0E81@verinet.com> <19990224230455.A11162@ontario.mooseriver.com>

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On Wednesday, 24 February 1999 at 23:04:56 -0800, Josef Grosch wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 24, 1999 at 09:25:11PM -0700, Allen Campbell wrote:
>> Terry Lambert wrote:
>>>
>>>>> The person who answered the phone said that he doubted there would ever be
>>>>> an implementation for FreeBSD because "no one uses it." When I pointed out
>>>>> that FreeBSD's estimated user base is two thirds that of Linux,
>>>>
>>>> You probably lost him at this point.
>>>
>>> Yeah.
>>>
>>> Just say it's 66% of Linux's installed base.
>>>
>>> Let him use the estimate for Linux to inflate FreeBSD's figures, since
>>> there's really no count of the Linux installed base, other than estimates.
>>
>> Red Hat is saying ten million according to Bob Young during a CNN
>> interview aired tonight.  Prior to that, the oft quoted number was seven
>> million.  Total guesswork.  Why not eleven million?  Fifteen?  Who could
>> possibly contradict him with any more credibility?
>
> Read his paper on estimating the installed base of Linux. It's pure hand
> waving. I suspect that Bob Young did not take statistics in University. I
> did and if I had turned in work like that I would have flunked.
>
> If he can say 10 million then I can say the installed base of FreeBSD is 6
> million.

In fact, I made an estimate a while ago.  It went something like this:

1.  We have 20,000 registered FreeBSD users.
2.  It's difficult to say how many people register, since there is no
    requirement to do so.  It could be as low as 0.1% of users.
3.  This would imply that there could be up to 20,000,000 users of
    FreeBSD.  This is a best-case estimate.
4.  Let's split the difference and say 10,010,000 users.

This means that we have 10,000 users more than Linux :-)

Greg
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