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Yet another checkpoint

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docs/survey-200603.xml
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@ -5,7 +5,7 @@
<!--$Id: template.xml 3517 2006-02-22 22:54:59Z judas_iscariote $-->
<articleinfo>
<title></title>
<title>The Shorewall Environment Survey 2006</title>
<authorgroup>
<author>
@ -35,9 +35,9 @@
</articleinfo>
<section>
<title>The Shorewall Environment Survey 2006</title>
<title>Background</title>
<para>In early March 2006, i @@@ embarked on the jorney of surveying
<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
@ -77,14 +77,31 @@
</section>
<section>
<title>Detailed results analysis</title>
<title>Results analysis</title>
<para>An important note about this survey is that it has a very small
sample size (103 complete responses at the time of writing), so any
conclusions drawn should be considered tentative. 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>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
@ -151,14 +168,14 @@
<title>Users</title>
<para>Unsurprisingly, 97% of survey respondents were male. Or to put it
another way: suprisingly, there are actually 3 female Shorewall users.
Being male seems to be an occupational hazard of life in the IT
another way: surprisingly, there are actually 3 female Shorewall users.
:-) Being male seems to be an occupational hazard of life in the IT
industry, and even more so in the more "nerdy" specialisations like
Linux and security. :-)</para>
Linux and security.</para>
<para>The largest age group of users is 25-34 years (42% of all
respondents). There were no retirees (65 and over) or minors (under 18)
in the responses. The distribution of all remaining age groups was
in the responses. The distribution of the remaining age groups was
fairly even.</para>
<para>The largest group of users in terms of education was those with a
@ -166,17 +183,16 @@
Fifty-seven percent (57%) of Shorewall users have a Bachelor's degree or
better. Many users' highest qualifications are not in an IT-related
discipline (42%). This remains fairly constant across the spectrum when
correlated with the highest level of qualifications.</para>
<para>Those users who do not claim IT as their highest discipline hold a
wide variety of other qualifications, including agriculture, art,
business, chemistry, education, various forms of engineering, law,
mathematics, physics and theology.</para>
correlated with the highest level of qualifications. Those who do not
claim IT as their highest discipline come from a wide variety of other
fields, including agriculture, art, business, chemistry, education,
various forms of engineering, law, mathematics, physics, and
theology.</para>
<para>Almost two-thirds of users (62%) use Shorewall as part of their
paid employment. Of these, 12% (7 of 58) do not use Shorewall as part of
their official duties. Cross correlation with level of education
revealed no major variances in this trend depending on level of
revealed no major variance in this trend depending on level of
education.</para>
<para>The majority of users (73%) began using the Internet in the 1990s.
@ -206,25 +222,27 @@
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 this is not surprising given Intel's</para>
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>
<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
indicating less than 400 MHz, with the same number greater than 2500
MHz. A number of responses in the field for additional information
suggested that the machines used were either recycled desktops, or
systems that were specifically built to do the job, and had been running
in that role for a number of years.</para>
indicating less than 400 MHz, and the same number greater than 2500 MHz.
A number of responses in the field for additional information suggested
that the machines used were either recycled desktops, or systems that
were specifically built to do the job, and had been running in that role
for a number of years.</para>
<para>RAM configuration seemed to mostly mirror CPU power, with the
majority (52%) of systems having between 256 and 1023 MB. A bias towards
higher RAM figures (only 11% of systems have less than 128 MB; 28% have
1024 MB or more) reflects the more server-oriented workload that many
Shorewall systems run (see section @@@ 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>
<para>RAM configuration seemed to mostly mirror CPU power, with a slight
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>
<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
@ -291,8 +309,8 @@
<section>
<title>Comments from users</title>
<para>Here's a sample of the comments we received about the survey
(carefully sanitised to make us look good ;-).</para>
<para>Here's a sample of the comments we received about the survey -
they have been carefully sanitised to make us look good. ;-)</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
@ -306,7 +324,7 @@
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Good job and a great product</para>
<para>Good job and a great product.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
@ -331,32 +349,30 @@
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>I'm quite intersted in seeing what the 'cross section' of
<para>I'm quite interested in seeing what the 'cross section' of
Shorewall users are like. It's made my life a lot easier over the
years, Thank you.</para>
years. Thank you.</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</section>
</section>
<section>
<title>Conclusions</title>
<para></para>
</section>
<section>
<title>Possible implications for the Shorewall project</title>
<para></para>
<para>The users we have seem, on the whole, rather experienced, and very
loyal. However, we don't seem to be attracting new users, despite new
features such as multi-ISP support and integrated traffic shaping. The
question about a GUI comes up frequently, and one wonders whether this is
would make a significant difference in Shorewall's uptake with new
users.</para>
<para></para>
</section>
<section>
<title></title>
<para></para>
<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
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>
<section>
@ -371,13 +387,13 @@
<para></para>
<section>
<title>Things i did right</title>
<title>What i did right</title>
<para></para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>Treat it like releasing free software:</para>
<para>Treat surveys like releasing free software:</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
@ -385,9 +401,17 @@
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>make branches when you release alpha and beta versions,
and bring the lessons you learned in those versions into the
main trunk</para>
<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>
@ -395,23 +419,43 @@
</section>
<section>
<title>Things i did wrong</title>
<title>What i did wrong</title>
<para></para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>Start small and work towards what you want to know. I tried to
do everything in one survey, and ended up confusing some
people.</para>
<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></para>
</listitem>
<para>Be prepared beforehand.</para>
<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>