More Results from the Debian Community Poll

I have announced the Debian Community Poll and published first results in former blog posts. I'll publish my analysis of the remaining questions about changes to Debian now.

Should Debian remove its non-free component?

• 80.8% answered no
• 10.7% answered yes
• 6.3% answered: I don't know or don't care
• 2.1% did not answer

Should Debian spend more money?

• 28.9% choose answer #5: I don't know or don't care.
• 22.8% choose answer #3: Debian should pay people having important positions in Debian and doing important work.
• 21.2% choose answer #1: Debian should spend more money on organizing developer conferences and team meetings.
• 11.4% choose answer #4: Debian should not spend more money.
• 8.0% choose other (see below) or didn't answer
• 7.7% choose answer #2: Debian should spend more money on free merchandizing, free DVDs, having a sexy web site, and being present on IT events.

There were quite a number of other answers. One participant missed the information about how the money is currently spend. Several participants didn't want to choose one of the provided answers. They either wanted to choose multiple answers or various combinations of them. Most other answers fall into one of the following categories:

• various marketing suggestions with different focus than answer #2
• Debian hosted hardware, infrastructure, services
• funding upstream development
• QA and work on release-blocking issues
• partners and commercial support
• developing important features
• security support for oldstable
• education of prospective developers and contributors
• documentation for users
• improving usability and accessibility
• certifications like LPIC
• getting supported by hardware and non-free software vendors
• beer
• promoting debian in developing countries
• help contributors running a business on Debian
• Bounty system
• updating stable to avoid becoming stale
• developing multimedia codecs
• getting compliant with FSF guidelines for a free system distribution
• developing free replacements to non-free software
• maintaining a database of debian-friendly hardware
• lobbying and politics
• visibility to wider society, even non-IT
• hardware for driver developers
• a more sexy DVD/CD set with graphics (like Fedora, Ubuntu)
• membership to boards of W3C, TEI Consortium, OASIS, etc.

Do you prefer time based releases instead of the "it's ready when it's ready" releases?

• 73.1% answered no
• 19.8% answered yes
• 5.1% anwered: I don't know or don't care
• 2.0% didn't answer

Which release interval do you prefer?

• 38.7% choose answer #2: about 12 months
• 36.9% choose answer #3: 18 - 24 months
• 10.0% choose answer #5: I don't know or don't care.
• 5.9% choose answer #1: about 6 months
• 5.5% choose answer #4: more than 2 years
• 3.0% didn't answer

Results from the Debian Community Poll

I have announced the Debian Community Poll in my former blog post. I have closed the poll today and I will start publishing its results now.

What is the codename of the current stable release?

This is the only compulsory question with the intention to block spammers. The correct codename is Lenny but I have accepted almost any answer that is somehow related to Debian. Version numbers, names from Sarge to Experimental, even well known codenames and version numbers from Ubuntu have been counted as correct. 22 partipants answered wrongly and their submissions got removed from the result set. A whopping number of 3258 submissions have been accepted and get analyzed now. Thanks to all participants!

How long have you been using Debian?

• 33.6% answered 6 - 10 years
• 32.7% answered 2 - 5 years
• 16.6% answered more than 10 years
• 15.5% answered 0 - 2 years
• 1.7% did not answer

On what kind of hardware are you using Debian?

Multiple answers are allowed for this question and that is why the values do not sum up to 100%.

• 80.5% are using Debian on the desktop
• 62.4% on the server
• 56.9% on the notebook
• 21.7% on the netbook
• 11.6% on embedded device(s)
• 3.2% on other device(s)

The following other devices have been mentioned: smartphone, virtual machine, nettop, NAS, HTPC, workstation, pendrive, live cd, cluster, thin client, router, rocket flight computer, ibm mainframe, and automatic bar tender.

Do you contribute to Debian?

• 50.0% choose answer #5: I don't contribute on a regular base.
• 31.2% choose answer #4: I'm regularly helping other Debian users.
• 8.0% choose other (see below) or simply did not answer
• 4.9% choose answer #3: I'm regularly contributing to Debian packages without uploading them by myself.
• 4.5% choose answer #1: I'm a Debian developer.
• 1.4% choose answer #2: I'm a Debian maintainer.

The following other answers have been provided:

• upstream developer or contributor
• translator
• bug reporter
• advocator
• former DD or DM
• prospective DD or DM
• mirror maintainer
• package/installer tester
• documentation writer
• donator or debconf sponsor
• debconf organizer or helper

How do you think about the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG)?

• 46.0% choose answer #2: I like the DFSG but it is not the most important reason for using Debian.
• 36.6% choose answer #1: The DFSG is very important to me. I could live with many changes in Debian but I would be very upset if Debian would allow non-free software into its main component in the future.
• 10.1% choose answer #3: I don't know.
• 4.9% choose answer #4: I don't care.
• 2.4% did not answer.

Are you using Debian derived distributions, too?

Multiple answers are allowed for this question and that is why the values do not sum up to 100%. There were a lot of different answers but the most frequent are:

• 47.1%: Ubuntu (Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu)
• 40.8%: no answer; this was the only way to say that someone does not use a derived distribution
• 11.0%: other (see below)
• 7.0%: damn small linux
• 4.8%: Sidux
• 4.3%: grml (juxlala)
• 2.2%: Knoppix
• 1.6%: ELive
• 1.4%: Maemo

The other answer includes the following distributions: 64studio, ALT Linux, arch linux, ArtistX, BackTrack, BRLix, Canaima GNU/Linux, catix, cdlinux.pl, CloneZilla, CrunchBang, Custom, ddwrt, debian arm userspace for zipit z2, DebXO (?), DreamLinux, Easy Peasy, eb4, eeebuntu, EMC2 Ubuntu (linuxcnc.org), Emdebian, Estrella Roja, Fedora, Finnix, Gentoo, gNewSense, Hackable:1, Kanotix, Kuliax, LFS and CLFS, LinEx, Linux Mint, live CDs, live-helper, Mepis antix, Musix, My own LiveCD, Mythbuntu, OpenInkpot, openwrt, paipix gnu, Parsix, Peppermint, personal debian derived, proxmox, Puppy, PureOS, qtopia, SHR, simplyMEPIS, Skolelinux, slackware, SymphonyOS, Toutou, Trisquel, tty GNU/Linux, UHU Linux, Univention Corporate Server, vinux, Voyage, Vyatta, whiite, Xandros, Xarnoppix. Not all of them are derived from Debian.

- to be continued -

Debian Community Poll

I have prepared a poll for users of the Debian operating system at http://tinyurl.com/3y33ska. We had the idea for the poll during the preparation of the MiniDebConf that is currently taking place in Berlin. Please spread the link and fill out the form yourself. Visitors of the MiniDebConf have the option to fill out the form on paper.