Subject: Re: Request for download stats on release

From: "Dave Page" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 09:02:34 +0100

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] 
> [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Josh Berkus
> Sent: 10 August 2004 19:05
> To: PostgreSQL www
> Subject: [pgsql-www] Request for download stats on release
> 
> Folks,
> 
> Is there a way we can get word to all the mirrors, asking 
> them to compile download counts for the week after 8.0 final 
> release?  I'd really like to have some stats to give 
> reporters, and we had trouble collecting these last time, so 
> I'm asking way in advance this time.

Hi Josh,

Last time round we did tell them that this wasn't going to become a
regular request. We can certainly email them, however bear in mind that
it tends to be the smaller mirrors that help, so the stats are not going
to be that accurate.

Regards, Dave

---

From: Josh Berkus <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 09:06:30 -0700

Dave,

> regular request. 

Yes, but last time round we also didn't get the figures; many mirrors never 
responded, and others did for the week *after* release week.

> We can certainly email them, however bear in mind that

Oh.  Then there isn't any way to get a reasonably accurate download count?

-- 
Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco

---

From: Peter Eisentraut <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 19:23:23 +0200

> Oh.  Then there isn't any way to get a reasonably accurate download count?

These download counts would be completely random anyway.  Most people get 
their dose of PostgreSQL via an OS distributor.  (Just look how often someone 
asks a question about PostgreSQL 7.2.1; these are the people stuck on Debian 
"stable".)  And even they are unable to count the downloads, because they 
have mirrors, and people mirror the mirrors, and put mirrors on their 
laptops.

Additionally, PostgreSQL is in or near the default installation in many 
distributions, so even if you knew the install count, you don't know anything 
about who actually uses it.

If you want some amusing (nonabsolute) usage statistics, I recommend 
<http://popcon.debian.org/>.

-- 
Peter Eisentraut
http://developer.postgresql.org/~petere/

---

From: Tom Lane <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 14:30:23 -0400

Peter Eisentraut <[email-masked]> writes:
> their dose of PostgreSQL via an OS distributor.

Sure, but the download counts just following a new release would give us
a reading on enthusiastic real users --- ie, people who are interested
enough to download a new major release as soon as it's available.

However, this is probably moot given the point that we won't get
cooperation from the larger mirror sites.

			regards, tom lane

---

From: Joe Conway <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 13:37:56 -0700

> cooperation from the larger mirror sites.

How difficult would it be to use a page similar to sourceforge's 
download page -- i.e. display and pick from available files on the main 
site, and then redirect the actual download to a selected mirror? 
Wouldn't that allow centralized collection of download stats?

Joe

---

From: "Marc G. Fournier" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 22:55:16 -0300 (ADT)

> cooperation from the larger mirror sites.

Why not add something like what pine does?  when you start up a new 
release of pine, the first time, there is an option to send an email 
letting them count # of users ... its totally optional ...

Maybe have an extension on initdb so that if run from a terminal, it 
prompts the installer for whether they want to send in a simple email 
letting us know its being used ... ?

Or something like that ... something both visible and that defaults to 
'opt-out', not opt-in ...

----
Marc G. Fournier           Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
Email: [email-masked]           Yahoo!: yscrappy              ICQ: 7615664

---

From: Tom Lane <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 22:27:10 -0400

> letting us know its being used ... ?

I think this is a bad idea.  People will find it invasive of their
privacy, and even with it we'd still have no idea of real usage counts,
considering how many people would opt out --- or never see the prompt
in the first place, because they're using an RPM or .deb installation
that's going to run initdb non-interactively.

We used to have a request to send email in the message that got printed
by 'make install'.  How many people responded to that?  Darn few that
I can recall.

			regards, tom lane

---

From: Bruce Momjian <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 23:28:59 -0400 (EDT)

The issue is how hard is it to get the information, and how useful is it
to us.  It is pretty hard to get, and if we knew a number, what would we
do with it that would help PostgreSQL?  Not much, I think.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tom Lane wrote:
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-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  [email-masked]               |  (610) 359-1001
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  13 Roberts Road
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073

---

From: Josh Berkus <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 20:31:22 -0700

Bruce,

> do with it that would help PostgreSQL?  Not much, I think.

Well, it's a moot point, I think, since we can't get it.  But this is 
something which reporters ask me for all the time.

-- 
Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco

---

From: Tom Lane <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 23:57:35 -0400

> something which reporters ask me for all the time.

Well, sure they ask that, because they don't understand what open source
is.  View it as an opportunity to educate them.   Commercial software
companies know exactly how many licenses they've sold, so (discounting
pirates) they have a good idea how many users are out there.  The
Postgres project does not control distribution of our software and so
we have no reasonable way to measure the number of users.   From our
perspective this is not a problem.

			regards, tom lane

---

From: Peter Eisentraut <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2004 07:31:09 +0200

> something which reporters ask me for all the time.

You might might remember, a great(?) while ago, the MySQL folks kept 
repeating that they had 4 million downloads, period.  Apparently, 
people just stopped downloading MySQL at some point, I guess.  With a 
bit of research and imagination you can compute that, even back then, 
PostgreSQL must have had a lot more than 4 million downloads in total.  
So in the end that was just  cute figure that told us nothing.

---

From: Peter Eisentraut <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2004 18:58:30 +0200

Tom Lane wrote:
> Sure, but the download counts just following a new release would give
> us a reading on enthusiastic real users --- ie, people who are
> interested enough to download a new major release as soon as it's
> available.

I guess you could compare the 8.0 download counts to the 7.4 and earlier 
counts on a few cooperating sites to get a growth curve.  That should 
tell you more than absolute numbers anyway.

---

From: Josh Berkus <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2004 10:02:58 -0700

Peter,

> tell you more than absolute numbers anyway.

Yeah, I'd like to.  Unfortunately, we don't have numbers for 7.4.

-- 
Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco

---

From: "Marc G. Fournier" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2004 15:48:59 -0300 (ADT)

> Yeah, I'd like to.  Unfortunately, we don't have numbers for 7.4.

Does this help:

 	http://developer.postgresql.org/xferstats

Note that I have xferlog back to June 4th of last year ... 7.4 was 
released Nov 23rd of last year ...

----

---

From: Josh Berkus <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2004 12:04:41 -0700

Marc,

>  	http://developer.postgresql.org/xferstats

Not really.  What we'd need is to get stats on one or two of those big 
mirrors.   

-- 
-Josh Berkus
 "A developer of Very Little Brain"
 Aglio Database Solutions
 San Francisco