I have for some time now been wondering how many people actually use Bongo.
The reason for this is that we have had images available for a while and I am still non the wiser as to how many people actually use them.
I faithfully spend hours and hours building packages and getting them out the door but have no markers to see if they are being used.
While reading the docs for the ESVA appliance (http://www.global-domination.org/esva) I noticed that they have a cronjob that downloads a file and immediately deletes it. This allows for roughly seeing who is using their appliance .
They have documentation that tells people how to remove the cronjob which effectively turns off this tool.
I propose that the Bongo project perhaps use something similar to allow us to know how many people use the products we produce. it would be nice to know how many people are using Bong while the Web-UI is not working and then once we release something if that number increases and at what rate.
I am really interested in ideas as to how we can achieve this with or without having some kind of phone home too.
Please leave a comment on this post if you like, or send an e-mail to the user or devel list or even come and have your say on the IRC channel.
I have also added a simple poll on the left
Thanks in advance
Comments
6 responses to “Standing up and being counted.”
I have been watching Bongo (and previously Hula) for some time. Not having a Web-UI is the only reason I have not downloaded it. I don’t know how many others there are like me, but I would suspect there are more.
Maybe you could have an install script queue an outgoing message when Bongo is first installed.
Firstly I want to say thanks for the response. Your continued interest in Bongo is appreciated.
I do like your idea and it would be easy to implement the only downside is that if the person then removes the server we have no way to find out. Do you have any thoughts.
Similar to Bill, I’ve also been keeping a eye on Bongo’s progress since hula (we’re old nims/netmail users). Though as we’re a large organisation, we’re holding back for a stable release with a web interface. We’ll keep downloading and trailing it occasionally in the meantime.
I’m not too keen on the idea of a cron job for the sake of stats, but I don’t have any other ideas either sorry. The initial email during setup seems the least intrusive. Or perhaps just polls on the website may give a rough idea on usage.
Hi Pete,
Thanks for the response.
I will take note of your comments and hopefully we can figure something out.
@Lance Haig
You have probably already thought of this and it may not encompass the full scope of usage you wish to track, but all I can add is, make sure to keep track of the servers, maybe by domain name, and also have a message sent during upgrades. It may take a few upgrades, but I think anyone actively using server will upgrade sooner or later.
Bill,
That is a great idea,
We must make sure we tread lightly and make sure we don’t create bad karma,
Thanks for the great ideas.