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I think am done with this. Feedback before i release it on an unsuspecting public, please!

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docs/survey-200603.xml
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@ -38,75 +38,86 @@
<title>Background</title>
<para>In early March 2006, i embarked on the journey of surveying
Shorewall users. Initially this sprang from my own curiosity: it seemed to
me that some of the systems at work on which i was using Shorewall were
bigger and more complex than a lot of the ones others were using, and i
wanted to find out if there were people out there who used it like i did.
As started thinking about the questions i would ask, i realised that i
could ask a few more questions that might help us as a project to
understand a bit more about all of our users.</para>
Shorewall users. Initially this sprang from my own curiosity: i thought
that some of the systems at work on which i use Shorewall may be bigger
and more complex than most others, and i wanted to find out if there are
people out there who use Shorewall like i do. As started thinking about
the questions i would ask, i realised that if i asked the right questions,
i could create a survey that might help the Shorewall project better to
understand its users.</para>
<para>I used <ulink url="http://www.zoomerang.com">Zoomerang</ulink> to
create the survey. It has a number of tools that make it really easy to
create useful surveys. To get the most benefit out of Zoomerang, you have
to subscribe to their professional version. In the long term, it would be
great to see a practical free software alternative that we could
self-host. A number of free content management systems such as <ulink
url="http://drupal.org">Drupal</ulink> have a survey module, but when i
last looked at them, they were much more limited and harder to use than
Zoomerang.</para>
create the survey. It has a number of tools that make it easy to create
useful surveys. To get the most benefit out of Zoomerang, you have to
subscribe to their professional version.</para>
<para>In the long term, it would be great to have a practical free
software alternative that could be self-hosted. A number of free content
management systems such as <ulink url="http://drupal.org">Drupal</ulink>
have a survey module, but when i last looked at them, they were more
limited and harder to use than Zoomerang.</para>
<section>
<title>Take the survey</title>
<title>Survey and results links</title>
<para>The survey is still open as of this writing, and can be accessed
at <ulink url="http://www.zoomerang.com/survey.zgi?p=WEB2253NNBCN44">the
Zoomerang survey page</ulink>. Further participation is encouraged. The
figures quoted in this document reflect the latest results at the time
of writing.</para>
</section>
<section>
<title>Survey results</title>
figures quoted in this document reflect the results at the time of
writing.</para>
<para>The <ulink
url="http://www.zoomerang.com/reports/public_report.zgi?ID=L22KHC6BPGLS">public
results</ulink> of the survey are also available. If you complete the
survey, a link to the results is provided on the thank you page.</para>
results</ulink> of the survey are available. If you complete the survey,
a link to the results is provided on the thank you page.</para>
</section>
<section>
<title>Sample size</title>
<para>An important note about this survey is that it has a small sample
size (103 complete responses at the time of writing), so any conclusions
drawn should be considered tentative.</para>
<para>To speculate on the overall number of users that this sample
represents, the <ulink
url="http://popcon.debian.org/source/by_inst.gz">Debian popularity
contest</ulink> reports 478 installations of Shorewall, 285 of which are
in active use. Assuming that the popularity contest represents 30% of
the Debian installed base (likely ridiculously optimistic), this would
make the number of active Shorewall systems approximately:</para>
<para>285 / 0.3 (percentage of Debian systems) / 0.26 (percentage Debian
holds of all distributions) = 3654 (rounding up the numbers to the
nearest whole, and assuming the percentages extrapolate
regularly)</para>
<para>This means that our survey represents a maximum of 2.8% of the
installed base, likely far less.</para>
</section>
<section>
<title>Other possible inaccuracies</title>
<para>Additionally, since the survey was open to multiple responses, it
could be that some people answered the questions about themselves more
than once, despite instructions to the contrary in the introduction
page.</para>
<para>There is an error in the released version of the survey for
question 15 (RAM size): it was a multiple choice question rather than
single choice, and thus there were more results than expected. The
number of errors doesn't seem to be significant.</para>
<para>If you notice any errors in this analysis, or have any suggestions
about how to improve it, please contact the author at <ulink
url="mailto:pgear@shorewall.net">pgear@shorewall.net</ulink>.</para>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>Results analysis</title>
<para>An important note about this survey is that it has a small sample
size (103 complete responses at the time of writing), so any conclusions
drawn should be considered tentative.</para>
<para>To speculate on the overall number of users that this sample
represents, the <ulink
url="http://popcon.debian.org/source/by_inst.gz">Debian popularity
contest</ulink> reports 478 installations of Shorewall, 285 of which are
in active use. Assuming that the popularity contest represents 30% of the
Debian installed base (likely ridiculously optimistic), this would make
the number of active Shorewall systems approximately:</para>
<para>285 / 0.3 (percentage of Debian systems) / 0.26 (percentage Debian
holds of all distributions) = 3654 (rounding up the numbers to the nearest
whole, and assuming the percentages extrapolate regularly)</para>
<para>This means that our survey represents a maximum of 2.8% of the
installed base, likely far less.</para>
<para>Additionally, since the survey was open to multiple responses, it
could be that some people answered the questions about themselves more
than once, despite instructions to the contrary in the introduction
page.</para>
<para>If you notice any errors in this analysis, or have any suggestions
about how to improve it, please contact the author at <ulink
url="mailto:pgear@shorewall.net">pgear@shorewall.net</ulink>.</para>
<section>
<title>Organisations</title>
@ -222,9 +233,9 @@
hardware, with a further 6% running it on x86-64/EM64T platforms. One
response was received indicating use of Shorewall on MIPS (Linksys WRT
platform). No responses were received for any other hardware platform.
While it is not surprising that Intel architectures would be first,
given their marketplace dominance, it seems a little skewed not to have
any representatives of other distributions.</para>
While it is not surprising that Intel architectures would be dominant,
given their market share, it seems a little skewed not to have any
representatives of other distributions.</para>
<para>A good spread of CPU power is shown in the survey responses. The
largest group was 400-999 MHz (30%), with only 16% of responses
@ -238,11 +249,8 @@
bias towards higher RAM figures. The majority (52%) of systems have
between 256 and 1023 MB; only 11% of systems have less than 128 MB; 28%
have 1024 MB or more. This reflects the more server-oriented workload
that many Shorewall systems run (see the section on server roles below).
(Note that there is an error in the released version of the survey for
this question: it was a multiple choice question rather than single
choice, and thus there were more results than expected. However, the
number of errors doesn't seem to be significant.)</para>
that many Shorewall systems run (see the section on server roles
below).</para>
<para>Shorewall systems on the whole tend toward smaller OS hard disks,
with 42% having disks 39 GB or smaller. The largest group by a small
@ -277,9 +285,9 @@
<para>The message about maintaining an up-to-date Shorewall system seems
to have gotten through, with 61% of respondents running the latest
version (3.0), and an additional 22% running the previous stable version
(2.4). Only 14% of users are running unsupported versions (2.2 and
older).</para>
stable version (3.0), and an additional 22% running the previous stable
version (2.4). Only 14% of users are running unsupported older versions
(2.2 and previous).</para>
<para>The most common roles played by Shorewall systems are:</para>
@ -309,8 +317,8 @@
<section>
<title>Comments from users</title>
<para>Here's a sample of the comments we received about the survey -
they have been carefully sanitised to make us look good. ;-)</para>
<para>Following is a sample of the comments we received about the survey
- they have been carefully sanitised to make us look good. ;-)</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
@ -357,6 +365,76 @@
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>Lessons learned about survey technique</title>
<section>
<title>Treat surveys like releasing free software</title>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>test on a small group before you go public</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>release early and often</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>make branches (copies) when you release alpha and beta
versions</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>merge the changes from branches (lessons you learned in those
versions) into the main trunk</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</section>
<section>
<title>Start small and work towards what you want to know with specific,
concrete questions</title>
<para>I tried to do everything in one survey, and ended up confusing
some people. For example, despite the fact that the survey's start page
clearly says "Please answer the questions for only ONE SYSTEM running
Shorewall", i received multiple comments saying that they couldn't
answer accurately because they ran more than Shorewall system.</para>
<para>It would have been better to have two surveys: one about the
people who use Shorewall, and another about the systems they run it on.
Better still would be for Shorewall to automatically collect appropriate
information about systems and request permission to send it to a central
location for statistical analysis. How to do this and maintain users'
privacy and obtain their permission efficiently is not an easy problem
with a product like Shorewall, which doesn't actually stay running on
user systems, and doesn't present a user interface per se.</para>
</section>
<section>
<title>Be prepared beforehand</title>
<para>Within hours of the survey's release, 50% of the results were in.
Within 3 days, it hit the Zoomerang basic survey limit of 100 responses.
I had not planned for such an enthusiastic response, and also was too
busy to download all of the results before the survey's time limit
expired. Fortunately, i was able to obtain funding to allow a Zoomerang
"pro" subscription to be purchased and thus provide advanced analysis,
and complete downloads of the results.</para>
</section>
<section>
<title>Incrementally improve your surveys</title>
<para>The final version of this survey was released still with a few
bugs. The released version was just a copy of my master survey, and i
continued to maintain the master after the final survey was released
(and during this analysis), and i'm sure the next version will be even
better.</para>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>Possible implications for the Shorewall project</title>
@ -370,7 +448,7 @@
<para>Shorewall seems to be predominantly used in small, i386-based
environments such as home LANs and small businesses. It seems to be
frequently combined with a number of other basic functions, such as DNS,
DHCP, NTP, VPN. Integration with (or perhaps providing a plugin module
DHCP, NTP, VPN. Integration with (or perhaps providing a plug-in module
for) a dedicated gateway distribution such as ipcop, Smoothwall, or Clark
Connect might be a good way to serve the needs of our users.</para>
</section>
@ -378,100 +456,19 @@
<section>
<title>Possible implications for other free software projects</title>
<para></para>
</section>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>The essence of free software is software by the people, for the
people. Knowing who the people are and what their needs are is
critical to this process.</para>
</listitem>
<section>
<title>Lessons learned about surveys</title>
<para></para>
<section>
<title>What i did right</title>
<para></para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>Treat surveys like releasing free software:</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>release early and often</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>test on a small group before you go public</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>make branches (copies) when you release alpha and beta
versions</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>merge the changes from branches (lessons you learned in
those versions) into the main trunk</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</section>
<section>
<title>What i did wrong</title>
<para></para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>Start small and work towards what you want to know.</para>
<para>I tried to do everything in one survey, and ended up confusing
some people. For example, despite the fact that the survey's start
page clearly says "Please answer the questions for only ONE SYSTEM
running Shorewall", i received multiple comments saying that they
couldn't answer accurately because they ran more than Shorewall
system.</para>
<para>It would have been better to have two surveys: one about the
people who use Shorewall, and another about the systems they run it
on. Better still would be for Shorewall to automatically collect
appropriate information about systems and request permission to send
it to a central location for statistical analysis. How to do this
and maintain users' privacy and obtain their permission efficiently
is not an easy problem with a product like Shorewall, which doesn't
actually stay running on user systems, and doesn't present a user
interface per-se.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Be prepared beforehand.</para>
<para>Within hours of the survey's release, 50% of the results were
in. Within 3 days, it hit the Zoomerang basic survey limit of 100
responses. I had not planned for such an enthusiastic response, and
also was too busy to download all of the results before the survey's
time limit expired. Fortunately, i was able to obtain funding to
allow a Zoomerang "pro" subscription to be purchased and thus
provide advanced analysis, and complete downloads of the
results.</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
<para></para>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title></title>
<para></para>
</section>
<section>
<title></title>
<para></para>
<listitem>
<para>If at all possible, build statistics gathering into your
application, and find a way to encourage people to use it. This
concrete data will help confirm the results of any surveys you might
conduct.</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</section>
</article>