A metrics question... Fedora contributors

[Matthew Miller]

I'd really like to be able to answer the questions:

 * How many core Fedora contributors are there?
 * How many casual but long-term committed contributors?
 * How about the long tail?
 * How does this break down by various project areas?

with data.

I have the hypothesis that Fedora follows the "90-9-1" rule, with a
very active core, a larger engaged group that isn't as visible as
individuals but which collectively contributes a lot, and then a lot of
casually interested contributors who chime in occasionally. Is this
true? Do the numbers come down to close to 90-9-1, or something else?
Has it changed over time (opened up, or become more restrictive)?

Then, building on the stats Bee (and Pingou) put together following the
election.... another hypothesis: the average voter turnout of about 200
is an approximation of the highly-engaged group (at least where the
engineering side of the distro is concerned). Can you support or
disprove this with data? (From fedmsg, mailing lists, or anywhere?)

I also think that the same probably applies to Ambassadors and that
election, possibly with little overlap of the FESCo set.

-- 
Matthew Miller
<mattdm(a)fedoraproject.org&gt;
Fedora Project Leader