On Wednesday 18 Aug 2010 05:31:53 Nelson Marques wrote: <big snip>
Without current data to support those claims and future data to evaluate and correct anything, I don't believe that the risk/benefit equation is very attractive.
I've quoted a bit out of another of your posts because it has relevance to this discussion. [quote]
I've found an article [1] which might be interesting for some. I can't really place much comments on it, but it seems quite interesting from my view and it does demonstrate pretty much the obvious.
[1] - http://linuxtrends.com/linux-distribution-popularity-trends/ [/quote]
I did some calculations on this using the linuxtrends search criteria and then married them up to some other numbers that have been thrown about by those who know, mainly Steve Ballmer and Distrowatch and at the same time making a couple of reasoned, but obviously arguable suppositions. The first supposition was that Steve Balmer was correct when he said that Linux share was about the same as Apple's: about 3.6%. Gartner at various times has claimed between 1.29% and 1.55%. The difference between Gartner and Ballmer however is within a reasonable margin of error, so I'm going with Steve. I'm also making the assumption that search reflects the install base. Distrowatch gives our five sampled Distros around 55% of the total linux install (it's actually a little less but I only counted the top twelve distros. No big deal, we're after trends) then our Famous Five have around 1.98% of the total OS install market. Now here's where it gets interesting. Given that we use the above assumptions to give us a rough guide to total install, then in 2005 SUSE share was just under 0.7%. and Ubuntu was a little under 0.5% By 2010 the SuSE influence had plummeted to under 0.2% and Ubuntu had gone up to just under 1.3% The trend is the important thing. The interesting comment made by Linuxtrends was that the spike in interest in SuSE happened around the time of the Novell take over, in other words at a point when there was a massive highly publicised rebranding. It seems these stats support the argument for a rebranding as soon as we can reasonably manage it
But you can pretty much ignore my opinion as in a way I'm not a true n'blue opensuse member, instead just a lurker and a old school fan of SuSE.
I wouldn't be so rude as to do that, your opinion matters as much as anyone else's, including mine. Open Source decision making is (or should be) about consensus, to reach that consensus requires interchange of opinion. Sometimes, in FOSS communities, such discussions can get robust. The design of the OpenOffice.org website for instance required robust debate for months because there were many radical elements in the design, but consensus was reached and the results, given the brief, have been spectacular. One just has to be ready to be in for the long haul. Change is obviously needed as the stats above show. Cheers GL -- Graham Lauder, OpenOffice.org MarCon (Marketing Contact) NZ http://marketing.openoffice.org/contacts.html OpenOffice.org Migration and training Consultant. Ambassador for OpenSUSE Linux on your Desktop INGOTs Assessor Trainer (International Grades in Office Technologies) www.theingots.org.nz -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+help@opensuse.org