[fab] Metrics: What we *could* get

[Mike McGrath]

Since we're all in the metrics mood I thought it would be good to get
a list of stats I think we could get, from a technology point of view,
not from a 'we should' view.  Hopefully to get us thinking about what
we can do for FC7.

Can Gets:

Number of times an install completes - Phone home at end of install,
won't work for installs that happen with machines offline.

Number of unique public IP's doing updates - What we're doing with the
yum logs, won't work for users contacting their own mirrors or
specifying public mirrors that aren't ours.  We'll miss groups using
nat, and people on dynamic IP's will get counted multiple times.

Number of OS's doing updates - By generating a key we can see how many
updates are being done by which os's.  If a machine is installed
multiple times and updated multiple times it will get counted multiple
times.

Registered Installs + phone-homes - Similar like RHN, require
registration or generate a unique key during the install phase and
then have those machines check in periodically.  This will not give us
machines not on the net.

Surveys: Just ask the users 'how many installs do you have, what do
you use them for'.  This will get us information from the people that
respond.

Registered users: similar to survey, we'd get a list of registered users.

Registered users + registered installs + phone-homes - This is the
most accurate way to get actual users who are using Fedora at a given
point in time and it is flawed.  It would give us a count of users and
how many installs are out there.

Can't gets (Or at least I can't figure it out):

People using Fedora: If we start talking about schools and public
labs, etc.  This number is impossible to get

Number of installs at any point in time: Machines could be on, off,
not on a network, not updating, blah blah.  This number is impossible
to get.  The closest we can come is the registered install + phone
home.

Number of desktop vs servers: The definition of workstation / server
is vague and unless we specifically ask in a survey during the
install, we'll never know.


Basically its difficult to get the numbers we actually want.  I'd
imagine Microsoft doesn't even have an accurate count of machines that
are installed out there and they gone to great lengths, including
limiting the use of the OS, to get this information.  In our case I
think we should keep it simple.

             -Mike