2:37 p.m.
Fedora Webmasters:
A while back (maybe back when we were still split between
fedora.redhat.com and fedoraproject.org), we had some code on a few of
our pages that allowed basic web statistics to be sucked into Red Hat's
larger web traffic analysis program -- the stuff that tracks visits for
redhat.com, jboss.com, etc.
Red Hat uses something called Omniture for this.
http://www.omniture.com/
In Fedora, we use awstats to track lots of things about people who visit
*.fedoraproject.org, and I personally find those stats to be very
interesting and revealing.
The folks who manage Red Hat's Omniture stuff would like to add in a
little bit of tracking into Fedora's websites.
My understanding is that this would involve the addition of some
Javascript on *selected* pages (perhaps index.html, get-fedora.html,
join.html, release notes, whatever. We can discuss that).
The purpose of adding this in would be to allow Red Hat's larger web
analysis group to see how Fedora traffic compares to and maps to other
Red Hat traffic. This would be valuable to them, and I would ask the
Fedora Websites team to allow Jesse Eversole (Red Hat engineer who I
have copied on this message) to share more details with you and then
consider the proposal.
Thank you for your time.
--Max
3:01 p.m.
Anyone who would like to know more about how our website tracking
infrastructure works please feel free to contact me. It suffices to say
that you will find it far superior to awstats having been a user of
awstats in the past.
Max Spevack wrote:
Fedora Webmasters:
A while back (maybe back when we were still split between
fedora.redhat.com and fedoraproject.org), we had some code on a few of
our pages that allowed basic web statistics to be sucked into Red
Hat's larger web traffic analysis program -- the stuff that tracks
visits for redhat.com, jboss.com, etc.
Red Hat uses something called Omniture for this.
http://www.omniture.com/
In Fedora, we use awstats to track lots of things about people who
visit *.fedoraproject.org, and I personally find those stats to be
very interesting and revealing.
The folks who manage Red Hat's Omniture stuff would like to add in a
little bit of tracking into Fedora's websites.
My understanding is that this would involve the addition of some
Javascript on *selected* pages (perhaps index.html, get-fedora.html,
join.html, release notes, whatever. We can discuss that).
The purpose of adding this in would be to allow Red Hat's larger web
analysis group to see how Fedora traffic compares to and maps to other
Red Hat traffic. This would be valuable to them, and I would ask the
Fedora Websites team to allow Jesse Eversole (Red Hat engineer who I
have copied on this message) to share more details with you and then
consider the proposal.
Thank you for your time.
--Max
3:09 p.m.
On Thu, 28 Feb 2008, Jesse Eversole Jr wrote:
Anyone who would like to know more about how our website tracking
infrastructure works please feel free to contact me. It suffices to
say that you will find it far superior to awstats having been a user
of awstats in the past.
To be clear:
I am not proposing that Fedora *stop* using awstats. I love awstats.
I am trying to open the door for Jesse to explain to the Fedora
webmasters how we can make a few tweaks to enable Omniture, and why that
would be useful to the larger body of Red Hat, and be a reasonably
simple thing for Fedora to do.
Jesse, could you give these folks some details? I'm opening the door
for you, but you've gotta step through it :)
--Max
Max Spevack wrote:
> Fedora Webmasters:
>
> A while back (maybe back when we were still split between fedora.redhat.com
> and fedoraproject.org), we had some code on a few of our pages that allowed
> basic web statistics to be sucked into Red Hat's larger web traffic
> analysis program -- the stuff that tracks visits for redhat.com, jboss.com,
> etc.
>
> Red Hat uses something called Omniture for this.
> http://www.omniture.com/
>
> In Fedora, we use awstats to track lots of things about people who visit
> *.fedoraproject.org, and I personally find those stats to be very
> interesting and revealing.
>
> The folks who manage Red Hat's Omniture stuff would like to add in a little
> bit of tracking into Fedora's websites.
>
> My understanding is that this would involve the addition of some Javascript
> on *selected* pages (perhaps index.html, get-fedora.html, join.html,
> release notes, whatever. We can discuss that).
>
> The purpose of adding this in would be to allow Red Hat's larger web
> analysis group to see how Fedora traffic compares to and maps to other Red
> Hat traffic. This would be valuable to them, and I would ask the Fedora
> Websites team to allow Jesse Eversole (Red Hat engineer who I have copied
> on this message) to share more details with you and then consider the
> proposal.
>
> Thank you for your time.
>
> --Max
3:20 p.m.
Max Spevack wrote:
On Thu, 28 Feb 2008, Jesse Eversole Jr wrote:
> Anyone who would like to know more about how our website tracking
> infrastructure works please feel free to contact me. It suffices to
> say that you will find it far superior to awstats having been a user
> of awstats in the past.
To be clear:
I am not proposing that Fedora *stop* using awstats. I love awstats.
I am trying to open the door for Jesse to explain to the Fedora
webmasters how we can make a few tweaks to enable Omniture, and why that
would be useful to the larger body of Red Hat, and be a reasonably
simple thing for Fedora to do.
Jesse, could you give these folks some details? I'm opening the door
for you, but you've gotta step through it :)
Not to be negative but Fedora has avoided using proprietary software or
services as much as possible and quite successfully. It is bad enough
that trend is not kept as much within Red Hat but why proliferate it
within Fedora too?
Rahul
3:29 p.m.
On Fri, 29 Feb 2008, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
Not to be negative but Fedora has avoided using proprietary software
or services as much as possible and quite successfully. It is bad
enough that trend is not kept as much within Red Hat but why
proliferate it within Fedora too?
Hi Rahul,
Let me explain my reasons for beginning this thread in the manner in
which I did:
Things I am *not* doing:
* I am not suggesting that Fedora should use any proprietary software.
* I am not *mandating* that anyone in Fedora do anything.
Things I *am* doing:
* I am responding to a query from Red Hat's web team about how they can
gain some visibility to Fedora traffic in their current system for all
other Red Hat properties.
* I am directing the person in charge of that (Jesse) to the Fedora
Websites team so that he can state his case (if he so chooses) and have
a conversation with the community.
---
My goal is always to allow the community *doers* to interact directly
with the Red Hat *doers* without folks like me having to be the middle
man. So when someone comes to me with a request that really belongs in
the hands of the Fedora Websites leaders, I believe that it is my job to
bring those two parties together, and try to summarize the topic of
discussion.
I do this while trying not to offer my own opinion, so as not to sway
the discussion one way or another.
Ultimately, from the Fedora point of view, this is a question of "adding
a little JavaScript to a few pages".
The pros of this:
* It is helpful to our friends in the larger Red Hat world, and we
would be doing them a favor.
The cons of this:
* Our friends in the larger Red Hat world need that JavaScript in order
to operate with a larger analysis system that Fedora would never choose
to implement themselves due to philosophical reasons.
It is up to the leaders within the Fedora Websites team to consider this
and make a decision. They can reject it outright. They can ask for
more information. They can debate. Whatever.
But I assume that you would rather have the opportunity to make a
decision like this directly, rather than have it be decided (in either
direction) for you.
--Max
6:50 p.m.
We discussed whether to track fedora.org with Omniture a couple of years
ago and elected not to do so at the time. If there is interest in the
Fedora website management community to explore the differences between
tracking using a tool like awstats versus Omniture then I would suggest
that we start up a thread on the topic. We can explain how our tracking
system works and the reports that would be available to the community.
I would also be interested in a discussion on the topic of what it means
to have "open services" versus "proprietary services" as it relates to
"open source" versus "proprietary source". I see this as a challenge
for
us at Red Hat in the growing market of SOAS and hosted systems and for
the open source community.
Jesse
Max Spevack wrote:
On Fri, 29 Feb 2008, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> Not to be negative but Fedora has avoided using proprietary software
> or services as much as possible and quite successfully. It is bad
> enough that trend is not kept as much within Red Hat but why
> proliferate it within Fedora too?
Hi Rahul,
Let me explain my reasons for beginning this thread in the manner in
which I did:
Things I am *not* doing:
* I am not suggesting that Fedora should use any proprietary software.
* I am not *mandating* that anyone in Fedora do anything.
Things I *am* doing:
* I am responding to a query from Red Hat's web team about how they
can gain some visibility to Fedora traffic in their current system for
all other Red Hat properties.
* I am directing the person in charge of that (Jesse) to the Fedora
Websites team so that he can state his case (if he so chooses) and
have a conversation with the community.
---
My goal is always to allow the community *doers* to interact directly
with the Red Hat *doers* without folks like me having to be the middle
man. So when someone comes to me with a request that really belongs in
the hands of the Fedora Websites leaders, I believe that it is my job
to bring those two parties together, and try to summarize the topic of
discussion.
I do this while trying not to offer my own opinion, so as not to sway
the discussion one way or another.
Ultimately, from the Fedora point of view, this is a question of
"adding a little JavaScript to a few pages".
The pros of this:
* It is helpful to our friends in the larger Red Hat world, and we
would be doing them a favor.
The cons of this:
* Our friends in the larger Red Hat world need that JavaScript in
order to operate with a larger analysis system that Fedora would never
choose to implement themselves due to philosophical reasons.
It is up to the leaders within the Fedora Websites team to consider
this and make a decision. They can reject it outright. They can ask
for more information. They can debate. Whatever.
But I assume that you would rather have the opportunity to make a
decision like this directly, rather than have it be decided (in either
direction) for you.
--Max
6:30 a.m.
Rahul Sundaram wrote:
Max Spevack wrote:
> On Thu, 28 Feb 2008, Jesse Eversole Jr wrote:
>
>> Anyone who would like to know more about how our website tracking
>> infrastructure works please feel free to contact me. It suffices to
>> say that you will find it far superior to awstats having been a user
>> of awstats in the past.
>
> To be clear:
>
> I am not proposing that Fedora *stop* using awstats. I love awstats.
>
> I am trying to open the door for Jesse to explain to the Fedora
> webmasters how we can make a few tweaks to enable Omniture, and why
> that would be useful to the larger body of Red Hat, and be a
> reasonably simple thing for Fedora to do.
>
> Jesse, could you give these folks some details? I'm opening the door
> for you, but you've gotta step through it :)
Not to be negative but Fedora has avoided using proprietary software
or services as much as possible and quite successfully. It is bad
enough that trend is not kept as much within Red Hat but why
proliferate it within Fedora too?
Rahul
While I agree that tracking Fedora downloads and web site traffic is a
great idea, I don't think Omniture is a good fit to do this. Omniture
is a great web site statistics and analytics tool but I agree with Rahul
on this one -- It doesn't fit well with the mission of Fedora.
--
grant
6:43 a.m.
No problem...we are not trying to force a solution where it is not
wanted. As one of our brand principles states, we are all about
"choice"....
e
Grant Shipley wrote:
Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> Max Spevack wrote:
>> On Thu, 28 Feb 2008, Jesse Eversole Jr wrote:
>>
>>> Anyone who would like to know more about how our website tracking
>>> infrastructure works please feel free to contact me. It suffices to
>>> say that you will find it far superior to awstats having been a
>>> user of awstats in the past.
>>
>> To be clear:
>>
>> I am not proposing that Fedora *stop* using awstats. I love awstats.
>>
>> I am trying to open the door for Jesse to explain to the Fedora
>> webmasters how we can make a few tweaks to enable Omniture, and why
>> that would be useful to the larger body of Red Hat, and be a
>> reasonably simple thing for Fedora to do.
>>
>> Jesse, could you give these folks some details? I'm opening the
>> door for you, but you've gotta step through it :)
>
> Not to be negative but Fedora has avoided using proprietary software
> or services as much as possible and quite successfully. It is bad
> enough that trend is not kept as much within Red Hat but why
> proliferate it within Fedora too?
>
> Rahul
>
While I agree that tracking Fedora downloads and web site traffic is a
great idea, I don't think Omniture is a good fit to do this. Omniture
is a great web site statistics and analytics tool but I agree with
Rahul on this one -- It doesn't fit well with the mission of Fedora.
--
grant
8:57 a.m.
On Thu, 28 Feb 2008 16:01:48 -0500
Jesse Eversole Jr <jeversol(a)redhat.com> wrote:
Anyone who would like to know more about how our website tracking
infrastructure works please feel free to contact me. It suffices to
say that you will find it far superior to awstats having been a user
of awstats in the past.
Hi Jesse. The question of superiority isn't interesting. Fedora is
very very committed to doing what it needs to get done using completely
opensource products when possible. (I say when possible to avoid
derailed discussions about PC bioses and router firmwares)
The reality is that Fedora itself would not make use of any thing that
Omniture may learn from our site. We're doing just fine with awstats,
and anything we feel is missing from awstats we'd work with the
upstream to provide that functionality.
However, if Red Hat as a corporation feels that they need to gather
some information about the Fedora websites, and that information is
only available through Omniture, and getting data to Omniture is only
possible through runtime java scripts, that's something else to discuss.
Can you explain what the java scripts are, how they work, what license
they're under, etc..?
--
Jesse Keating RHCE (jkeating.livejournal.com)
Fedora Project (fedoraproject.org/wiki/JesseKeating)
GPG Public Key (geek.j2solutions.net/jkeating.j2solutions.pub)
10:16 a.m.
Sure,
Omniture uses what I call a "client side" tracking technique using
javascript to dynamically markup an image tag with a query string and
fetch that image from Omniture's servers sending data to them via the
query string. Google and Yahoo offer similar services with less
sophisticated features, but the approach is effectively the same. The
data is stored on Omniture's servers and available for reporting in near
real time especially when it comes to basic traffic data. It is
probably important to note that Omniture and awstats are not mutually
exclusive. One is server based and the other runs on the webpage
sending data to a hosted platform.
I would have to dig into details to completely expose what our license
agreement with Omniture is as is applies to the usage of their software
since is a service that we buy from them. Omniture is more akin to
Salesforce.com and Google Analytics.
To get started with the base functionality of Omniture you drop in some
javascript, hopefully in a header or footer, and a few minutes later you
can login to your account and start looking at traffic reports.
Omniture has many sophisticated features one of which has the interest
of Red Hat in response to your comment about Red Hat's needs relating to
Fedora. We have the capability with Omniture to do cross-domain path
analysis. That is, we can gain much deeper insight into the
relationship between the two or more sites from tracking cross site
browsing behavior. We can track visitor paths across multiple sites
including our international sites. This extends beyond simple entry and
exit page analysis. The data is rich and the reporting interface
powerful to the extent that it takes some time to explore all the
different capabilities should the Fedora community wish to use Omniture
for some of its own reporting.
We have been asked by the JBoss folks to setup jboss.org and I am
currently working with that group to outfit jboss.org. It is almost a
cut and paste task into a header template for basic tracking and you are
welcome to sit in (with my management's approval of course) on that
deployment and post deployment reporting. The decision as to whether
deploying a piece of javascript code on a fedora.org page supplied by
Red Hat using a Red Hat funded hosting service like Omniture is in
conflict with Fedora's core mission in my opinion clearly belongs to the
Fedora community.
Thanks,
Jesse
Jesse Keating wrote:
On Thu, 28 Feb 2008 16:01:48 -0500
Jesse Eversole Jr <jeversol(a)redhat.com> wrote:
> Anyone who would like to know more about how our website tracking
> infrastructure works please feel free to contact me. It suffices to
> say that you will find it far superior to awstats having been a user
> of awstats in the past.
>
Hi Jesse. The question of superiority isn't interesting. Fedora is
very very committed to doing what it needs to get done using completely
opensource products when possible. (I say when possible to avoid
derailed discussions about PC bioses and router firmwares)
The reality is that Fedora itself would not make use of any thing that
Omniture may learn from our site. We're doing just fine with awstats,
and anything we feel is missing from awstats we'd work with the
upstream to provide that functionality.
However, if Red Hat as a corporation feels that they need to gather
some information about the Fedora websites, and that information is
only available through Omniture, and getting data to Omniture is only
possible through runtime java scripts, that's something else to discuss.
Can you explain what the java scripts are, how they work, what license
they're under, etc..?
10:18 a.m.
On Fri, 2008-02-29 at 11:16 -0500, Jesse Eversole Jr wrote:
Sure,
Omniture uses what I call a "client side" tracking technique using
javascript to dynamically markup an image tag with a query string and
fetch that image from Omniture's servers sending data to them via the
query string. Google and Yahoo offer similar services with less
sophisticated features, but the approach is effectively the same. The
data is stored on Omniture's servers and available for reporting in near
real time especially when it comes to basic traffic data. It is
probably important to note that Omniture and awstats are not mutually
exclusive. One is server based and the other runs on the webpage
sending data to a hosted platform.
I would have to dig into details to completely expose what our license
agreement with Omniture is as is applies to the usage of their software
since is a service that we buy from them. Omniture is more akin to
Salesforce.com and Google Analytics.
Oh, right. This is where we got in trouble around about FC6, wasn't it?
B/c it is more or less a tracking image?
-sv
10:30 a.m.
On Fri, 29 Feb 2008, Jesse Eversole Jr wrote:
Sure,
Omniture uses what I call a "client side" tracking technique using javascript
to dynamically markup an image tag with a query string and fetch that image
from Omniture's servers sending data to them via the query string. Google and
Yahoo offer similar services with less sophisticated features, but the
approach is effectively the same. The data is stored on Omniture's servers
and available for reporting in near real time especially when it comes to
basic traffic data. It is probably important to note that Omniture and
awstats are not mutually exclusive. One is server based and the other runs on
the webpage sending data to a hosted platform.
I would have to dig into details to completely expose what our license
agreement with Omniture is as is applies to the usage of their software since
is a service that we buy from them. Omniture is more akin to Salesforce.com
and Google Analytics.
To get started with the base functionality of Omniture you drop in some
javascript, hopefully in a header or footer, and a few minutes later you can
login to your account and start looking at traffic reports. Omniture has many
sophisticated features one of which has the interest of Red Hat in response to
your comment about Red Hat's needs relating to Fedora. We have the capability
with Omniture to do cross-domain path analysis. That is, we can gain much
deeper insight into the relationship between the two or more sites from
tracking cross site browsing behavior. We can track visitor paths across
multiple sites including our international sites. This extends beyond simple
entry and exit page analysis. The data is rich and the reporting interface
powerful to the extent that it takes some time to explore all the different
capabilities should the Fedora community wish to use Omniture for some of its
own reporting.
I think this is great, really. I'd love to do it but Omniture has chosen
to build their software in a closed source manner so I don't think we can
do it. Unless they want to OSS their code, we won't be able to use it.
-Mike
11:31 a.m.
In answer to the question as to when Omniture might open source their
hosting code I would say definitely not before they let Charles Manson
out of jail. I could be wrong. I am genuinely interested in the movement
toward hosted systems that are driven by proprietary software. Many of
these systems are data collection and reporting systems that serve
business needs. The data belongs to the subscriber of the service while
the core software remains proprietary and belongs to the hosting
provider. In many cases these systems provide open APIs for clients to
customize their own installations. In reading the thread I am
interpreting from some that service providers such as Salesforce should
open source the software that drives their service business. Indeed I
have heard calls for Red Hat to open source RHN. Google is a proprietary
software service that makes money off indexing open source websites as
well as the rest of the world. Does it make sense for an open source
community driven website to collect revenue from banner ads pointing to
its site through Google?
Mike McGrath wrote:
On Fri, 29 Feb 2008, Jesse Eversole Jr wrote:
> Sure,
>
> Omniture uses what I call a "client side" tracking technique using
javascript
> to dynamically markup an image tag with a query string and fetch that image
> from Omniture's servers sending data to them via the query string. Google and
> Yahoo offer similar services with less sophisticated features, but the
> approach is effectively the same. The data is stored on Omniture's servers
> and available for reporting in near real time especially when it comes to
> basic traffic data. It is probably important to note that Omniture and
> awstats are not mutually exclusive. One is server based and the other runs on
> the webpage sending data to a hosted platform.
>
> I would have to dig into details to completely expose what our license
> agreement with Omniture is as is applies to the usage of their software since
> is a service that we buy from them. Omniture is more akin to Salesforce.com
> and Google Analytics.
> To get started with the base functionality of Omniture you drop in some
> javascript, hopefully in a header or footer, and a few minutes later you can
> login to your account and start looking at traffic reports. Omniture has many
> sophisticated features one of which has the interest of Red Hat in response to
> your comment about Red Hat's needs relating to Fedora. We have the capability
> with Omniture to do cross-domain path analysis. That is, we can gain much
> deeper insight into the relationship between the two or more sites from
> tracking cross site browsing behavior. We can track visitor paths across
> multiple sites including our international sites. This extends beyond simple
> entry and exit page analysis. The data is rich and the reporting interface
> powerful to the extent that it takes some time to explore all the different
> capabilities should the Fedora community wish to use Omniture for some of its
> own reporting.
>
>
I think this is great, really. I'd love to do it but Omniture has chosen
to build their software in a closed source manner so I don't think we can
do it. Unless they want to OSS their code, we won't be able to use it.
-Mike
11:56 a.m.
On Fri, 29 Feb 2008, Jesse Eversole Jr wrote:
In answer to the question as to when Omniture might open source their hosting
code I would say definitely not before they let Charles Manson out of jail. I
could be wrong. I am genuinely interested in the movement toward hosted
systems that are driven by proprietary software. Many of these systems are
data collection and reporting systems that serve business needs. The data
belongs to the subscriber of the service while the core software remains
proprietary and belongs to the hosting provider. In many cases these systems
provide open APIs for clients to customize their own installations. In reading
the thread I am interpreting from some that service providers such as
Salesforce should open source the software that drives their service business.
Indeed I have heard calls for Red Hat to open source RHN. Google is a
proprietary software service that makes money off indexing open source
websites as well as the rest of the world. Does it make sense for an open
source community driven website to collect revenue from banner ads pointing to
its site through Google?
No it doesn't.
The board decided we could get some banner ads through
search.fedoraproject.org. We don't run search.fedoraproject.org so the
decision was made that it was ok in that case as it would benefit Fedora
directly and we still would not be running closed source software on
Fedora Servers.
Its worth noting... its still not done and search.fedoraproject.org is
still not in use.
-Mike
5:55 p.m.
Jesse Eversole Jr wrote:
In answer to the question as to when Omniture might open source their
hosting code I would say definitely not before they let Charles Manson
out of jail. I could be wrong. I am genuinely interested in the movement
toward hosted systems that are driven by proprietary software. Many of
these systems are data collection and reporting systems that serve
business needs. The data belongs to the subscriber of the service while
the core software remains proprietary and belongs to the hosting
provider. In many cases these systems provide open APIs for clients to
customize their own installations.
A few questions:
To be clear, who owns the data in this Omniture exchange? What data is
sent into the service? Can we get it back out in raw form (and who does
that belong to)? Can we get it back out in processed form (and who does
that belong to)? Do the pieces of software (the javascript on the
client in this case) have an open source license?
We've talked about the possibility of using S3 before and we have s3fs
and boto in Fedora. S3 is a proprietary web service but it seems we've
entertained the idea of using it because:
1) The code that runs on the client is open source.
2) The data (in S3, files) is ours and can be placed into the service
and taken out with no problems.
If it's not okay to be packaged in Fedora we've so far said no to using
it for Fedora. If Omniture placed the javascript client code under an
OSS license (or someone reimplemented it under an OSS license being
careful not to violate copyright law) then I'm pretty sure it could be
made available in Fedora repositories. That would eliminate the #1
blocker to using it on our websites.
That would still leave the interesting question of whether we would be
okay with:
1) the data going from us to Omniture.
2) the data being used by Red Hat.
3) using the data ourselves.
4) whether we'd want to be able to pull the data back out in raw form or
a processed form that we would be free do things with.
In reading the thread I am
interpreting from some that service providers such as Salesforce should
open source the software that drives their service business.
Not necessarily. What I hear is if Salesforce was used within Fedora
then it should be open source before that happens.
(Of course, raving open source fanatic that I am, I'd be very happy if
Salesforce open sourced their code :-)
Indeed I
have heard calls for Red Hat to open source RHN.
RHN is a funny proposition since Red Hat is in the business of
convincing other companies that open source software is superior... but
has a piece of proprietary software in its offering.
I think it's a distraction in a conversation about whether we want to
help Red hat by using a hopefully open source piece of client code via a
closed-source company.
Google is a proprietary
software service that makes money off indexing open source websites as
well as the rest of the world. Does it make sense for an open source
community driven website to collect revenue from banner ads pointing to
its site through Google?
Generically, it might make sense. Specifically for Fedora it probably
does not.
-Toshio
1:29 p.m.
On Fri, 2008-02-29 at 15:55 -0800, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
Do the pieces of software (the javascript on the
client in this case) have an open source license?
Sorry to arrive late to this discussion.
The Omniture JS code used to be on fedora.redhat.com, and it was
docs.fedoraproject.org for a while. Mike McGrath (iirc) and I were
discussing its existence one day when we noticed docs.fp.o was loading
slowly due to the Omniture calls. So, that was one mark against the
service in general -- it presented another point of failure on release
days, which are ironically the days we'd want the most traffic analysis
for.
The reason I decided to yank the code is clear -- it is not-FLOSS and we
have no rights to use or distribute it as part of Fedora Project web
properties.
Here is a sample of the Omniture JS from redhatmagazine.com:
<!-- SiteCatalyst code version: H.1.
Copyright 1997-2005 Omniture, Inc. More info available at
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The code only has a copyright notice and no FLOSS license.
As Toshio states later in this email, that is the #1 blocker. I
consider the "added point of failure" #2, because of historical problems
with Omniture that I'm not convinced are just history.
So Jesse -- if you can find out if Omniture can or will license that
code under an OSI approved license, then we'll actually have something
to discuss. Otherwise, it is a ForbiddenItem.
- Karsten
--
Karsten Wade, Developer Community Mgr.
Dev Fu : http://developer.redhatmagazine.com
Fedora : http://quaid.fedorapeople.org
gpg key : AD0E0C41
7:29 a.m.
Karsten,
This is new territory for me and reminds me of the days when I used to
deal with "fair use" in the digital capture and copying of material
submitted by faculty to the library reserve desk. My approach on issues
like this is to just put the question to Omniture and see what they
say. I do know that they have a rather large piece of javascript
embedded in a function call that does all the heavy lifting of logic
when it comes to marking up the image call to their backend servers. I
have no idea what it means to have a FLOSS license on a piece of
javascript that sends marked up query strings to an opaque service
handler. Even if the javascript were released under a FLOSS license it
would not be usable without a contract with Omniture to enable a network
service to talk with it. Right now I don't see compatibility. You
might want to mention something to the awstats community about adding
client side tracking to the software might be something of interest to
the community.
Karsten 'quaid' Wade wrote:
On Fri, 2008-02-29 at 15:55 -0800, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
> Do the pieces of software (the javascript on the
> client in this case) have an open source license?
>
Sorry to arrive late to this discussion.
The Omniture JS code used to be on fedora.redhat.com, and it was
docs.fedoraproject.org for a while. Mike McGrath (iirc) and I were
discussing its existence one day when we noticed docs.fp.o was loading
slowly due to the Omniture calls. So, that was one mark against the
service in general -- it presented another point of failure on release
days, which are ironically the days we'd want the most traffic analysis
for.
The reason I decided to yank the code is clear -- it is not-FLOSS and we
have no rights to use or distribute it as part of Fedora Project web
properties.
Here is a sample of the Omniture JS from redhatmagazine.com:
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<script type="text/javascript">
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The code only has a copyright notice and no FLOSS license.
As Toshio states later in this email, that is the #1 blocker. I
consider the "added point of failure" #2, because of historical problems
with Omniture that I'm not convinced are just history.
So Jesse -- if you can find out if Omniture can or will license that
code under an OSI approved license, then we'll actually have something
to discuss. Otherwise, it is a ForbiddenItem.
- Karsten
11:25 a.m.
On Tue, 2008-03-11 at 08:29 -0400, Jesse Eversole Jr wrote:
Karsten,
This is new territory for me and reminds me of the days when I used to
deal with "fair use" in the digital capture and copying of material
submitted by faculty to the library reserve desk. My approach on issues
like this is to just put the question to Omniture and see what they
say.
Exactly, that would clear things up.
I do know that they have a rather large piece of javascript
embedded in a function call that does all the heavy lifting of logic
when it comes to marking up the image call to their backend servers. I
have no idea what it means to have a FLOSS license on a piece of
javascript that sends marked up query strings to an opaque service
handler.
I think it's analogous to the GPL'd kernel modules that talk with
not-in-the-kernel binary-only drivers. There are other examples. It's
not anyone's favorite way of doing things, but it is at least
technically legal, if not entirely ethical.
Even if the javascript were released under a FLOSS license it
would not be usable without a contract with Omniture to enable a network
service to talk with it.
Right, it would be a licensing to allow compatibility of use, not really
to create a community around it. They can dual-license it, btw, being
the sole owner of the copyright, and have a wide range of licenses to
choose from.
One catch may be where the JS is actually subtly different for each
client of Omniture.
Bottom line -- I seriously doubt Omniture will consider this idea just
for Red Hat, unless they have other clients who are asking for it. But
if you do ask and they say yes, we'll be glad to seriously consider the
idea.
Right now I don't see compatibility. You
might want to mention something to the awstats community about adding
client side tracking to the software might be something of interest
to
the community.
Any chance that Red Hat is interested in furthering the quality of free
and open stats tracking? Maybe help grow a solution that is better than
the for-pay, non-free options?
- Karsten
--
Karsten Wade, Developer Community Mgr.
Dev Fu : http://developer.redhatmagazine.com
Fedora : http://quaid.fedorapeople.org
gpg key : AD0E0C41
10:38 a.m.
Jesse Eversole Jr wrote:
Sure,
Omniture uses what I call a "client side" tracking technique using
javascript to dynamically markup an image tag with a query string and
fetch that image from Omniture's servers sending data to them via the
query string. Google and Yahoo offer similar services with less
sophisticated features, but the approach is effectively the same. The
data is stored on Omniture's servers and available for reporting in near
real time especially when it comes to basic traffic data. It is
probably important to note that Omniture and awstats are not mutually
exclusive. One is server based and the other runs on the webpage
sending data to a hosted platform.
I would have to dig into details to completely expose what our license
agreement with Omniture is as is applies to the usage of their software
since is a service that we buy from them. Omniture is more akin to
Salesforce.com and Google Analytics.
To get started with the base functionality of Omniture you drop in some
javascript, hopefully in a header or footer, and a few minutes later you
can login to your account and start looking at traffic reports.
Omniture has many sophisticated features one of which has the interest
of Red Hat in response to your comment about Red Hat's needs relating to
Fedora. We have the capability with Omniture to do cross-domain path
analysis. That is, we can gain much deeper insight into the
relationship between the two or more sites from tracking cross site
browsing behavior. We can track visitor paths across multiple sites
including our international sites. This extends beyond simple entry and
exit page analysis. The data is rich and the reporting interface
powerful to the extent that it takes some time to explore all the
different capabilities should the Fedora community wish to use Omniture
for some of its own reporting.
We have been asked by the JBoss folks to setup jboss.org and I am
currently working with that group to outfit jboss.org. It is almost a
cut and paste task into a header template for basic tracking and you are
welcome to sit in (with my management's approval of course) on that
deployment and post deployment reporting. The decision as to whether
deploying a piece of javascript code on a fedora.org page supplied by
Red Hat using a Red Hat funded hosting service like Omniture is in
conflict with Fedora's core mission in my opinion clearly belongs to the
Fedora community.
Thanks,
Jesse
Personally as a fedora project contributor I think this kind of
information for FEDORA.ORG might be interesting. I am not sure who owns
that domain but it sure would help us put a value on it just in case the
Fedora Project wants to buy it some day.
Hopefully you get my point.
--
73,
Robert 'Bob' Jensen
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BobJensen
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIG/AmateurRadio
5927
days inactive
5939
days old
websites@lists.fedoraproject.org
18 comments
11 participants
participants (11)
-
Emma S. Battle -
Grant Shipley -
Jesse Eversole Jr -
Jesse Keating -
Karsten Wade -
Max Spevack -
Mike McGrath -
Rahul Sundaram -
Robert 'Bob' Jensen -
Seth Vidal -
Toshio Kuratomi