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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!nntp.coast.net!chi-news.cic.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!info.ucla.edu!nntp.club.cc.cmu.edu!cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!oitnews.harvard.edu!yale!gumby!andrews-cc!gillham From: gillham@andrews.edu (Andrew Gillham) Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy,alt.os.linux,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc Subject: Re: a monthly FreeBSD magazine (and other *BSD's too) Date: 16 Dec 1995 19:44:49 GMT Organization: Andrews University Lines: 41 Message-ID: <4av7jh$k48@orion.cc.andrews.edu> References: <4ajc07$sb7@unix2.glink.net.hk> <4atq47$l46@agate.berkeley.edu> <4att23$mha@agate.berkeley.edu> <4au4fo$pbo@agate.berkeley.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: edmund.cs.andrews.edu Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.advocacy:30483 alt.os.linux:6442 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:10559 comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc:1559 In article <4au4fo$pbo@agate.berkeley.edu> nickkral@parker.EECS.Berkeley.EDU (Nick Kralevich) writes: > >Anyway, I would appreciate it if you could provide me with figures, >ANY figures, regarding the size of the FreeBSD user base. My original >contention was that there are no more than 20,000 FreeBSD users, and >you have shown me nothing to disprove that statement. I would appreciate >it if you could post even out of date statistics, ANYTHING! But my >guess is that there are no valid FreeBSD user statistics out there. Having ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to base my guess on, I would _guess_ that Walnut Creek CD-ROM has sold a substantial fraction of 20,000 CDs, if not more than 20,000. Using some of the "statistically valid" percentages listed by yourself and/or the Linux counter, (0.5%-5%), we see: 20,000 == 0.5% = 4,000,000 20,000 == 5.0% = 400,000 10,000 == 0.5% = 2,000,000 10,000 == 5.0% = 200,000 5,000 == 0.5% = 1,000,000 5,000 == 5.0% = 100,000 1,000 == 0.5% = 200,000 1,000 == 5.0% = 20,000 500 == 0.5% = 100,000 500 == 5.0% = 10,000 Now, did I miscalculate something here, or should you, perhaps, piss off? Even the most avid Linux user should be able to realize that Walnut Creek sells quite a number of FreeBSD CDs, and also realize that the percentage of users that _buy_ a CD is low. -Andrew "didn't take statistics, so sue me" Gillham PS. We're all beginning to sound like Windows .vs. OS/2 shipments. -- ============================ Real 32bit multi-tasking UN*X System Andrew Gillham | TCP/IP,NFS,PPP,4.4BSD-lite,multi-user gillham@andrews.edu | i386,sparc,alpha,mac68k,amiga,others LAN/WAN/NW/UN*X specialist | ---> http://www.NetBSD.org <---