Update question: some user data

[Mike McGrath]

On Sat, 6 Mar 2010, Adam Williamson wrote:

> I thought to myself yesterday, 'what this long and fractious thread
> about update policy *really* needs is some unscientific and
> controversial numbers'. =) So, I ran a forum poll! Everyone loves those,
> right?
>
> Here it is: http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=241710
>
> I tried to present the poll in a very neutral way, and as far as I know,
> it hasn't been linked to from anywhere else; only regular forum members
> are likely to come across it. So it shouldn't be massively inherently
> biased, and has a reasonable shot of giving us a vague idea of what some
> Real Fedora Users think.
>
> The numbers do surprise me, to be honest. As I write this, it's 34-8 -
> that's over 80% - in favour of 'adventurous' updates. A lot of the
> replies make it clear that people really do see being 'bleeding edge' as
> being a part of Fedora's nature, and a part of the reason why they run
> it. I wouldn't honestly have expected that; I'd have expected much
> closer to a 50/50 split if anything. A lot of people explicitly say
> things like 'I run Fedora so I can have the latest stuff on my desktop,
> if I want a more conservative system I'll run CentOS'.
>
> No, the voting numbers aren't huge, but it's still some kind of data. I
> can promote the poll to the forum front page to try and get more input,
> if desired.
>
> What do people make of this?
>

I don't think people realize what they're asking for.  I'll just defer to
my favorite Ford quote:

"If I had asked my customers what they wanted," Ford said, "they would
have said a faster horse."

The best part of all of this is, it doesn't matter anymore.  We've let
Fedora go completely directionless for years now.  If we listen to the
users, they'll all tell us different things.  Especially if you get a
sample size large enough (your poll isn't anywhere near large enough to be
scientific which is why you called it unscientific :)

Ahwell, back to designing by committee because that works so well.

	-Mike