[BSDCert-Announce] BSD Certification Group Newsletter for December 2005

bsdcert-announce at lists.nycbug.org bsdcert-announce at lists.nycbug.org
Thu Dec 15 13:18:29 EST 2005


(PDF and HTML versions of the newsletters are also available on the 
website.)

BSD Certification Group Newsletter
December 2005

Table of Contents

1 Report from FOSS India
2 Fund Raising Drive
3 Thank You NYI and NYC*BUG
4 FreeBSD Brasil LTDA on the BSD Certification Effort
5 New Non-Voting Chair
6 Roadmap Translated to Mexican Spanish
7 Mailing Lists
8 Website Statistics Report and Analysis
9 About this Newsletter



1 Report from FOSS India

Siju George has returned from FOSS India 
(http://foss.in/2005) with this report about his 
experience in handing out copies of the BSD 
Certification brochure:

On the 2nd, 3rd and 4th days of FOSS somewhere between 
1200-1300 brochures were distributed to the delegates. 
Since FOSS did not have BSD representations earlier, 
many people were surprised to find a BSD booth and even 
more people were shocked to hear that the BSD community 
worldwide are taking a certification initiative without 
finding a vendor to do it for them. All most people 
could do was wonder at the brochure and say "hey! 
that's cool, A certification initiated by the 
community? This is going to be different! certainly!".

David Fetter (http://fetter.org/) from the PostgreSQL 
development team approached me to know the details 
because he said that the PostgreSQL people wanted to do 
something similar for PostgreSQL. He asked me to 
furnish him with the details of how we actually go 
about it once the things are finalized.

Tariq Sani, owner of http://www.sanisoft.com/, came and 
asked more info about this because he felt, unlike Zend 
certification for PHP which is vendor based, he wanted 
to have a community-driven certification for PHP.

It seems many are going to follow the path of BSD 
certification in the coming days. I also found to my 
amazement that the Indian Institute of Science, 
Bangalore used FreeBSD servers and some of them from 
there were very much interested to know about the BSD 
certification.

I was also approached by Arun, a Red Hat trainer in 
Bangalore who has his own institute. He promised to 
give the facilities in his institute on week ends and 
every weekday afternoon for doing anything related to 
the BSDs. He said he would like to help out in 
providing a testing centre for BSD certification for 
free in Bangalore. Bangalore is the Silicon valley of 
India and I feel this is great! He will also be working 
to build up an active BUG in Bangalore.

2 Fund Raising Drive

BSD Certification needs your help! We're in the middle 
of our first fund-raising drive with a goal of $35,000 
which will be used towards the psychometric assessment 
of the BSDA exam. If you've already donated, thank you 
for your support. If you haven't, consider visiting the 
Donate tab of the site to make a PayPal contribution. 
No donation is too small and the quicker we raise the 
funds, the quicker the psychometric assessment can take place.

We'd also like to ask you to make sure that the 
relevant forums and mailing lists that you subscribe to 
are aware of the fund-raising effort. We've added a 
downloadable Sponsorship Fact Sheet to the Donate tab 
of the site. If your company wished to negotiate a 
donation or you know of a contact at a company who may 
be interested, feel free to email either Dru Lavigne or 
Jim Brown or use the contact form on the website.

3 Thank You NYI and NYC*BUG

The BSD Certification Group would like to recognize New 
York Internet for the donation of space and bandwidth 
for our development and mirror websites. We would also 
like to recognize the New York City *BSD User Group for 
donating hardware, resources, and time for those sites 
and our mailing list. Thank you NYI and NYC*BUG for 
your generous donations and all the help you provide to 
the BSDCG.

The New York Internet Company (http://nyi.net/) is an 
advanced Internet Service Provider offering Internet 
Services since 1996. Core services include Dedicated 
Servers, Colocation, as well as Web Hosting and 
Internet Access. Their clients have two things in 
common: a need for mission-critical reliability, as 
well as NYI's personal and responsive round-the-clock 
technical support.

The New York City *BSD User Group (http://nycbug.org/) 
provides a forum for discussion and a bridge for 
learning about the various BSD operating systems. Their 
aim is to raise awareness and to advocate the BSD's, 
expand the user base, and to provide insight and 
education to all levels of users. They offer monthly 
meetings on vital topics, an active mailing list, fund 
raising efforts for the projects, and an informative 
website. They also sponsor and manage the most 
important BSD conference on the East Coast, NYCBSDCON 
(http://nycbsdcon.org/).

4 FreeBSD Brasil LTDA on the BSD Certification Effort

The BSD Certification Group would like to recognize 
FreeBSD Brasil LTDA and its partner, MDBrasil, for the 
primary online infrastructure provided since the 
beginning of the Group, and for donating server 
hardware, connectivity and human resources for the 
maintenance and availability of the main website and 
mail server.

FreeBSD Brasil LTDA is a FreeBSD-only oriented company 
which provides services and training in the FreeBSD 
operating system. It is three years old and counts over 
400 professionals trained by its qualifications 
programs and many ISP/ASP companies as clients, 
especially government and WiFi services providers. 
FreeBSD Brasil is made up of people who are actively 
involved in FreeBSD maintenance and development as well 
as BSD-related activities in the Brazilian Open Source 
community. FreeBSD Brasil has promoted BSDCon Brasil, 
BSDDay Sao Paulo and many other BSD events in the 
largest country of South America. It has been part of 
the official FreeBSD pt-br documentation efforts, and 
involves the running of the Brazilian FreeBSD Users 
Group, the biggest BSD community in the country.

Human resources is contributed from FreeBSD Brasil by 
two BSD Certification Group members, Patrick Tracanelli 
and Jean M Melo, and other indirect contributors, 
especially relating to the localization efforts for 
Brazilian Portuguese.

5 New Non-Voting Chair

M. Warner Losh has volunteered to be the non-voting 
chair to oversee the selection of the board of director 
candidates. He has been involved with *BSD for more 
than 10 years.

Warner's first install of FreeBSD was version 1.0 
Gamma, which he obtained by mailing Jordan Hubbard a 
blank set of floppies. Warner has served as the FreeBSD 
security officer, he has more than 5 years experience 
writing device drivers for FreeBSD, and has been a 
FreeBSD core member for several years. He has also 
contributed to NetBSD and OpenBSD, in the past. Warner 
has a BS in Computer Science and Mathematics from New 
Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology and was an 
honors student there.

6 Roadmap Translated to Mexican Spanish

The Mexican Spanish team has finished their translation 
of the Roadmap. It is available for download at
http://www.bsdcertification.org/downloads/BSDCertificationRoadmap_mx_mx.pdf 
and the press release, in Mexican Spanish, can be read at 
http://www.bsdcertification.org/index.php?NAV=News&Item=pr025. 
A big thanks to Eric De La Cruz Lugo and the rest of 
the Mexican Spanish team.

7 Mailing Lists

The BSD Certification Group mailing list currently has 
812 subscribers. And the announcements list has 126 subscribers.

If you are not on the announcements list, please sign up at 
http://lists.nycbug.org/mailman/listinfo/bsdcert-announce/. 
It is a closed list for announcements regarding the The 
BSD Certification Group.

The general discussion list is at 
http://lists.nycbug.org/mailman/listinfo/bsdcert/.

8 Website Statistics Report and Analysis

By Patrick Tracanelli

In November, we had 5340 different visitors, which is a 
lot lower (around 40%) than October, but still on the 
usual average. In the first months of the year, we had 
an average of visitors which used to count around 3000 
and 3600. In the last 3 months, this average increased 
a lot, around 100% and we found out it was not a 
temporary change, because it rested for over 90 days. 
In October, this new average, 6500 visitors, was 
surpassed around 25%, getting to 8203 visitors, and now 
is back to approximately 5000-6500. In November, we had 
72840 website hits, while our average on the last 
months (average raised by October) is approximately 
75000 hits average.

It averages in November about 163 visitors a day, and 
about 16 Mbytes of data transfered in a daily basis 
(our record, from July is approximately 220 Mb).

On November 1st and 2nd, we reached the month's top 
access, counting 480 visitors each, and 140843 Kbytes 
transferred. It is certainly a reflection of the end of October.

We still have our main access period between 10 and 18 
hours. This eight hour period is responsible for 
approximately 79% of all our visits in November, which 
are all "commercial" period of times, so people still 
visiting us mostly when they are at work.

In September we had the second Survey released, and it 
is still a well accessed URL in October and now in 
November. The BSD Associate PDF release from October 
also counts as one of the most accessed URLs in 
November, including direct access from outside 
websites. But this month the most accessed URL was the 
root URL, so even considering some direct access to our 
internal pages, it was not that much, considering the 
last three months.

The top ten accessed pages are:

1  14.22% 1.29%  /
2  13.83% 6.66%  /error.html
3  2.06%  42.82% /downloads/pr_20051031_usage_survey_en_en.pdf
4  2.03%  0.01%  /robots.txt
5  0.75%  17.35% /downloads/pr_20051005_certreq_bsda_en_en.pdf
6  0.43%  7.95%  /downloads/BSDCertificationRoadmap.pdf
7  0.15%  0.29%  /downloads/brochure8.pdf
8  0.13%  0.02%  /downloads/pr_20050912_usage_survey_en_en.html
9  0.12%  6.16%  /downloads/sr1_links.pdf
10 0.08%  0.27% 
/downloads/20051027_BSDA_command_reference_en-en.pdf

  Top 5 URL by Kbytes

In November, our top URL regarding data transfer rate 
are mostly related to the Usage Survey and the BSD 
Associate exam document, which, together with the 
Roadmap are the most downloaded files this month, just 
like in October.

#       Kbytes  URL

1       415129  42.82% 
/downloads/pr_20051031_usage_survey_en_en.pdf
2       127164  17.35% 
/downloads/pr_20051005_certreq_bsda_en_en.pdf
3       69940   7.95%   /downloads/BSDCertificationRoadmap.pdf
4       63433   6.66%   /
5       60963   6.16%   /downloads/sr1_links.pdf

  Top 10 Entry Pages

In November, the front webpage is again the main entry 
page, followed by the error pages, the news tab and the 
English Usage Survey.

#       Hits    Visits  URL

1       5038    1383    /
2       5183    1040    /error.html
3       1       47      /news.htm
4       47      33 
/downloads/pr_20050912_usage_survey_en_en.html
5       20      20      /downloads/NewsMay05Rev7.html
6       4       4       /downloads/pr-jta-20050720.html
7       4       2       /downloads/JuneNewsletter.html
8       2       2 
/downloads/pr_20050912_usage_survey_pt_pt.html
9       21      2       /scripts/contactresults.shtml
10      1       1       /downloads/BSDCertSurvey01_de-de_ann.html

The error.html error page is mostly due to website restructuring.

  Top Referrals

In November, our top referrers are a set of websites 
which usually show up as the top referrers for all 
months. Richard's Tao Security blog is the number one 
site which attracts visitors to us, followed by some 
from China, especially http://blog.china-pub.com and 
FreeBSDChina.org. The later is Slashdot. Together they 
make the Top 10. See the Top 30 Referrals sites so you 
can have idea on who follows Richard's, Slashdot and 
the two China sites closely:

1       2955    http://taosecurity.blogspot.com/
2       959     http://blog.china-pub.com/more.asp
3       863     http://blog.china-pub.com/blog.asp
4       453     http://www.freebsdchina.org/forum/viewtopic.php
5       350 
http://www.freebsdchina.org/forum/topic_25962.html
6       195     http://bsd.slashdot.org/article.pl
7       192     http://www.bsdcertification.org
8       188     http://taosecurity.blogspot.com
9       162     http://bsd.slashdot.org/
10      107     http://www.taosecurity.blogspot.com/
11      101     http://www.bloglines.com/myblogs_display
12      88      http://know.mitretek.org/MySite/default.aspx
13      81      http://lair.moria.org/planet/security/
14      79      http://gcu-squad.org/
15      78      http://taosecurity.blogspot.com/2005_03_01_...
16      77 
http://bsd.slashdot.org/bsd/05/09/18/1743239.shtml
17      71      http://127.0.0.1:5335/system/pages/news
18      61      http://taosecurity.blogspot.com/2005_10_01_...
19      55      http://taosecurity.blogspot.com/2005_09_01_..
20      46 
http://www.freebsdchina.org/forum/topic_26414.html
21      44      http://dormrf.free.fr/rss/fr/index.php
22      44      http://www.monkey.org/~jose/secblogs.html
23      42      http://taosecurity.blogspot.com/2005_07_01_...
24      41      http://www.gcu-squad.org/
25      37      http://www.hup.hu/modules.php
26      35      http://taosecurity.blogspot.com/2005_11_01_...
27      34      http://taosecurity.blogspot.com/2005_08_01_...
28      33      http://www.bsdguru.org/
29      33 
http://www.freebsdchina.org/forum/topic_21870.html
30      33      http://www.google.com/search

  About Browsers / User Agents

Just like October, Mozilla family of web browsers are 
still the most used navigation applications that people 
use to visit us, which count over 56% of total visits. 
Most visits using a Mozilla family browser are from 
Microsoft Windows platforms using Firefox. The second 
most usual combination is Mac OS X with 
Firefox/Mozilla, the third is FreeBSD with Firefox and 
FreeBSD with Mozilla. Later, we get Linux with 
Firefox/Mozilla, and everything else are about the same 
on usage compared to each other.

Microsoft Internet Explorer on both Microsoft Windows 
(25%) and Mac OS X (7,2%) represent approximately 31% 
of our visitors browser application.

Google Bot and MSN Bot are usually getting to our 
website. It is true of a number of other spiders. The 
curious thing to note is that many people is 
downloading our files using the fetch(1) command. 
"fetch libfetch/2.0" issued around 18430 hits in 
November. No videogames refrigerators have reached us 
in November, but we had 130 hits from Mobile Telephones 
(our record on this kind of equipment). Forty-six were 
Siemens and 71 were Treo (probably the same user always).

  Geo (countries) Statistics on Visitors

Thirty-eight percent of our visits were from US in 
August, while about 17% could not be resolved. Among 
those resolved, Germany, Brazil, Poland, France and 
Italy follow the top listing of countries which visits 
us most often -- all countries which do not natively 
speak English. Germany and Brazil had their top access 
on the first ten days of November while all others have 
balanced hits along the whole month.

Here you can follow the top thirty countries/regions 
which visited us in November.

#       Hits    Country/Location

1       15807   Network
2       7238    Unresolved/Unknown
3       3793    US Commercial
4       812     Germany
5       761     Brazil
6       616     Poland
7       512     France
8       474     Italy
9       459     Canada
10      439     Non-Profit Organization
11      377     Netherlands
12      371     Mexico
13      364     US Educational
14      338     Romania
15      329     US Government
16      314     Japan
17      278     Sweden
18      273     Australia
19      228     Russian Federation
20      186     Taiwan
21      170     United Kingdom
22      160     Ukraine
23      155     Hungary
24      150     Belgium
25      138     India
26      127     US Military
27      114     Denmark
28      113     Greece
29      76      Finland
30      73      Estonia

  Search expressions

Ninety-six percent of the searches which link to 
BSDCG's website are made on Google. The other 4% is 
shared among MSN, Yahoo and Altavista, with some minor 
(fewer than 0.3%) for Lycos. The top five strings when 
people search the web are:

#       Hits    Search Expression

1       45      bsd certification
2       29      project org chart
3       28      BSD Certification
4       27      bsd
5       18      free brazilian portuguese exams in PDF


9 About this Newsletter

The BSD Certification Group newsletter is published 
every month, near the middle of the month.

Thank you to the contributors to this newsletter: Dru 
Lavigne, Siju George, Jonathan Drews, and Patrick 
Tracanelli. The editor is Jeremy C. Reed.

If you have any news items related to the BSD 
Certification, please let us know by submitting via the 
contact form on the website or by sending an email to 
newsletter at BSDCertificationGroup.org. Or if you would 
like to volunteer for the translation team please send 
a note with the subject "translation" on the website's 
contact form.



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