Tuesday, November 06, 2007

BBC Head of Technology claims only 400 people read the BBC website under Linux

Via the Nation of Shopkeepers I have read the single most hilarious and frankly dumb statement ever by a BBC executive given to .Net in an interview. Apparently,
"We have 17.1 million users of bbc.co.uk in the UK and, as far as our server logs can make out, 5 per cent of those [use Macs] and around 400 to 600 are Linux users."
Yes that's right, only 400 to 600 people in the UK use Linux to read the BBC website. Considering the BBC website is one of the most popular in Britian, and considering the Linux users in Britain number into the hundreds of thousands at minimum, the idea that only 400 to 600 are reading the BBC is bloody absurd. I must know at least 50 of them apparently.

Update: The Register ran a story about this late last week and as one would expect it's caused consternation amongst the Open Source community.

7 comments:

Tony said...

Better numbers are emerging from the BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2007/11/operating_system_figures.html

Fidothedog said...

Remind me, quite why do we pay for these people?

Oh yes the fines. Bloody hell that sort of distortion of facts is worthy of Polly Toynbee

Anonymous said...

The BBC is in bed with Microsoft. See this interview here

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071021231933899

Anonymous said...

How dare the BBC cast such a slur on Linux users by suggesting their numbers are insignificant? It appears the actual number of Linux users is between 0.3% and 0.8%.

Anonymous said...

Could be that most of the Linux community has better things to do with its time, or better sources of information?

Anonymous said...

Well, I read the BBC news pages from Linux regularly. I can't believe there are that few of us.

Anonymous said...

"How dare the BBC cast such a slur on Linux users by suggesting their numbers are insignificant? It appears the actual number of Linux users is between 0.3% and 0.8%."

"Remind me, quite why do we pay for these people?

Oh yes the fines. Bloody hell that sort of distortion of facts is worthy of Polly Toynbee"

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Does it really matter as much as you make out?