A few years ago, I was hired as an expert witness in a court case involving a software licensing dispute. One of the contentious points was determining which of two sites was more often used by visitors to download pieces of software that were part of a larger package distribution. Because both sites are huge software repositories with myriads of mirror sites, it wasn’t a simple matter. One party was making the claim that showing proof of software download didn’t imply that visitors were completing the process. It turns out the case was settled before I got the opportunity to prove (or disprove) file download completion (based solely on Common Log format files) in a court. A quick recommendation on this type of issue, steps must be taken during the site development stage to gather and deliver this type of information; otherwise it’s a process that will get so tedious that it will eat up the last remaining bits of your social and family life. It will likely also leave you and your client frustrated long after the whole affair is over. (More…)