Survey on open-source software

[calande]

I am creating a questionnaire for a survey on open-source software (OS & apps). I'd like your contribution to have a look at it and to bring a contructive critique to improve the questions/replies. As soon as the questionnaire is ready, I will release it for the community to answer and then we should know a little more about the relationship between users and open-source software.

You'll find the draft of the questionnaire here: http://www.auriance.com/docs/questionnaire.html

Please tell me what you think, how we can improve it, thanks in advance.

[falko]

This questionnaire is for individuals, not companies, right?
It might also be interesting to have a survey with business-specific questions.

I think you should add the answer "Other" to all questions (except those that can be answered with yes or no ) and then let the users explain why they chose "Other".

[calande]

Yes Falko, this is mainly for individuals as this is for for desktop software, although it can be used in the enterprise. What kind of business-specific questions do you have in mind? If they are pertinent, I'll add them with pleasure

Good idea, I'm going to add this "Other" option as well
Thanks.

[falko]

Originally Posted by calande

What kind of business-specific questions do you have in mind? If they are pertinent, I'll add them with pleasure

Some questions that refer to the various licenses (BSD vs. GPL. vs. proprietary licenses) (you know, the license might be a reason for enterprises not to use a certain software), something that refers to the available support for a software (a lot of enterprises pay for proprietary software simply because they get support from the vendor if anything goes wrong), etc.

[calande]

This makes sense. Problem is that I'm not sure many companies will take the survey, as it will only be released to public on the web (digg, osnews, slashdot, etc...). Do you think it's worth it?

[falko]

Maybe it's a good idea to do it in two steps: first you publish the survey for individuals, and if that one becomes a success (i.e., lots of people answer it and you get publicity on digg, slashdot, etc., you can publish the next survey (this time for enterprises).

[sjau]

Interesting survey... may I ask what your motivation is for this survey? What you will do with the data collected?

[calande]

Sure, this will be used by open-source operating systems to know what is missing, to know what users want, and to adapt to their needs.

[falko]

Where will you publish the results? Are you associated with any Linux distribution?

[calande]

Hi Falko, I just posted the survey: http://digg.com/software/Survey_on_o...or_the_desktop

Results will be published, yes. It's not associated with any distro.