Sam Varghese
Monday, 12 May 2008 23:26
Opinion and Analysis
Page 4 of 6
I sent a list of questions to Waugh Partners on April 25. These are given below in italics with my comments in bold:
1. Size of the community: you mention that your understanding of the size of the community is based on membership of community organisations, mailing list subscriptions around Australia and group attendance figures and other information about the community. Can you provide the names of organisations that were taken into account? What criteria were employed to include or exclude organisations (if any were excluded, that is)?
This was the major point which I could not get past. The industry figures seemed fine to me but that sample size for the community - 327 - was something that stuck in my craw.
2. How many members were there in each organisation? Was the fact that people are often members of multiple organisations taken into account?
Multiple membership is common in FOSS community organisations, hence this query.
3. You mention that the data was collected through two online surveys. What measures were taken to ensure the security of these surveys? (You are aware, no doubt, that online surveys are notoriously susceptible to manipulation by technically competent people.)
This question deals with something that often leads to online publications pulling surveys offline.
4. What measures were taken to eradicate duplicate responses to the survey - the case of one person, at times out of patriotism to the cause of open source, filling in data twice? (Once again, I don't have to point that IP spoofing is a trivial thing for technically competent folk to effect).
