[OT] Free software versus software idea patents

[harrismh777]

Ian Kelly wrote:
> There is at least one method of measuring it without resorting to
> sales figures: logging user-agent data from web browsers.  Is it
> perfectly accurate?  Of course not.  But there are a number of
> different organizations that do this, sampling hundreds of thousands
> of different websites, and they consistently report that the various
> versions of Windows have a total usage share ranging from 80% to 90%.

     True enough.

     How many web crawlers have you built? Are there any web programmers 
out there who need a web bot to hit multiple sites zillions of times a 
month from different places on earth to 'up' the number of hits for 
economic reasons? I've seen my share of this.

     How mamy times have you altered the identity of your web browser so 
that the web site would 'work'? You know, stupid messages from the 
server that say, "We only support IE 6+, upgrade your browser...",  so 
you tell it you're using IE 6 and, well no problem.

     Web site data is bogus. It assumes even distributions... it assumes 
even usage of the site from all surfers, it assumes no web crawlers and 
no bots, it assumes no browser identity tampering, and it assumes that 
there aren't those who for economic reasons are not inflating the 
numbers deliberately (no, really??) from world-owned bot farms.

     There is no reliable way to measure free software usage. But, there 
sure is a lot of posturing going on in the market place ...  wonder why?


kind regards,
m harris