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Michael Tiemann - Subject: Valid census? ( Jun 16, 2008, 16:28:55 )
According to Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Census): "A census is the procedure of acquiring information about every member of a given population. [...] "The census can be contrasted with sampling in which information is only obtained from a subset of a population. As such it is a method used for accumulating statistical data, and also plays a part in democracy (voting). Census data is also commonly used for research, business marketing, planning purposes and not at least as a base for sampling surveys." I do not see how it is valid to call this a census, unless there is a means to compel every single member of the open source community to surrender their information for the sponsors and executors the census. Is Microsoft promising to provide such muscle for OpenLogic? Or is Microsoft unclear on what the term "census" actually means. (I have my own opinions on whether they understand what "open source" means, at least when they use the term publicly.) Either way I don't see this producing a valid result, just more confusion.
