The Great Awakening

Over the years, a number of people (more than 190.000, in fact) have registered with the Linux Counter, and then have been removed from the count because of inactivity - so-called "freezing".

There may be many reasons for this - losing access to the email, forgetting the password, forgetting about the counter, or (unthinkable as it may seem) not using Linux any more.

The Counter tries to help people remember by sending out regular reminders every year, and occasionally sending out reminders to people who have been frozen. But seemingly, that is not enough.

In December 2003, I (Harald) decided to check the code for reminders, to make sure everyone who's been frozen had gotten the "very last" reminder, and send out new reminders to those who hadn't received one, to say that the account had been frozen, and offer reactiviation. We were even able to offer one-click reactivation, thanks to Patrick Reijnen's work on "direct login URLs".

And there turned out to be a lot of them.
On December 29, the rush started; so far (Jan 7), more than 25.000 emails have been sent out, resulting in more than 5.400 bounces - but also resulting in more than 2.900 reactivated entries.

That's good! - and it's still not finished....