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Steven wrote:
You can measure the amounts of products you sell, but to my knowledge, you can't 'scientifically' measure the amount of believe or sympathy one has (or gained during your speech) for Free Software. Your assumption says believe in Free Software is *always* less useful than buying the products simply because believe is not quantifiable as the amount of products. I don't agree with this. For instance you give a speech and sell no products at all. But a group of people decide after hearing you talk to do some research and decide to start their own Free Software project. You can't measure it so it is not or less useful than selling a single or more products ?
But we can measure this. There will be an increase in Free Software projects. There will also be a corresponding increase in support for Free Software projects in that locality. Therefore your speech is successful at promoting Free Software as a concept and unsuccessful at obtaining a sale.
If there is a mission to establish new projects we could examine the following:
If X gives a speech in Berlin and Berlin subsequently has an increase in Free Software projects we can assume that X is likely to have a part in that. If Y gives a speech in Berlin and there is no measurable increase in Free Software projects we can assume that Y did not effectively encourage people to set up projects.
According to this X is more effective at establishing support for new projects than Y. X would therefore be more useful to deploy into environments where new Free Software projects need to be encouraged.
Whether or not money is involved is not important. The key thing is to have defined targets that are measurable. This allows results to be understood and methodology to be refined.
Something like belief or sympathy is difficult to measure. However, results can be measured through other things: people signing up to organisations like the FSFE and contributing ideas is one example.
Shane
- -- Shane Martin Coughlan e: shane@shaneland.co.uk m: +447773180107 w: www.shaneland.co.uk - --- Projects: http://mobility.opendawn.com http://gem.opendawn.com http://enigmail.mozdev.org http://www.winpt.org - --- Organisations: http://www.fsfeurope.org http://www.fsf.org http://www.labour.org.uk http://www.opensourceacademy.gov.uk - --- OpenPGP: http://www.shaneland.co.uk/personalpages/shane/files/publickey.asc