Launchpad Stats

Thanks to Sidnei da Silva, I've been made aware that Launchpad is now publishing download statistics. https://edge.launchpad.net/plone/3.2/3.2.2 has the latest, apparently accumulated only since February 2009.

The Launchpad stats show 255,710 downloads of which 188,298 are for the unified installer for Linux/BSD/Solaris/OSX. 64,496 are downloads for the Windows buildout. The small fraction remaining are for the OSX installer or downloads without Zope or Python.

Converting these to percentages reveals 25% of Plone 3.2.2 downloads were for Windows boxes; 74% for *nix.

As interesting as these numbers may be, its a long leap from downloads to installation base. Our three venerable 2.5.5 instances only required one download and resulted in two dozen portals being developed. On the other hand, at the College of Santa Fe, I'd have 16 students each download the Windows installer just for an evening's exercise.

From my point of view, the good news of the week has been the release of funds to upgrade our server to 3.2.2. That means all our new Plone portals will roll out in 3.2. If existing portal projects fund their migration either this summer or fall, we'll be just in time for next winter's 4.0.

SourceForge Downloads

Its a windy Saturday morning in Albuquerque and I'm about to head out into it for a bonsai workshop with Michael Hagedorn. But before I do that, I'm waiting on the coffee pot to finish brewing and that gives me a couple moments to hop over to SourceForge and see how the download stats are doing.

The graph at right shows calendar year 2007 (ignore December since its an incomplete month). Obviously, since the high watermark last Feb-Mar, things have tapered off. In fact since the rollout of 3.0, downloads have been quite weak.

Does this mean that Plone is falling out of favor? I doubt it, but coffee's done, so my explanation will have to wait until this evening.

Download History

Here's the latest compilation of download stats from SourceForge since the dawn of time. The all-time high in Oct. 2006 was just after the 2.1.4 rollout in Sept. 2006.

Other peaks coincide with releases: Mar. 2005 is four months after 2.0.5 and Apr. 2004 was probably due to 2.0.

The most recent peaks align with the version 2.5.2 activity early last year. As with vulnerability data, 3.0 hasn't been out long enough to make a significant appearance. Look for a spike after Naples and towards the end of the year as 3.0 usage picks up.