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The OS Wars: We Have A Winner

sourceforge.net

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Re: The OS Wars: We Have A Winner

#21

This article is an example of how not to visualize data. The charts are not helpful in any way.

God, yes. It frustrated me so much that I ended up just copying the data into JS arrays and generating my own charts using the Google Visualization API.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/25782/sourceforge.html

Pretty eye-opening. What's clear is that the 'Other' category brings so much uncertainty to the data that it renders the data virtually useless.

Re: The OS Wars: We Have A Winner

#22

This article is an example of how not to visualize data. The charts are not helpful in any way.

God, yes. It frustrated me so much that I ended up just copying the data into JS arrays and generating my own charts using the Google Visualization API. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/25782/sourceforge.html Pretty eye-opening. What's clear is that the 'Other' category brings so much uncertainty to the data that it renders the data virtually useless.

That's an awesome chart to visualize

Re: The OS Wars: We Have A Winner

#26

Linux downloads have declined because most developers get binaries from their distribution and fewer and fewer old projects (i.e. those from source forge) need to be downloaded as source. OS X is a backwater as far as binary distribution is concerned and so developers have to use brew or macports. Every time you do "brew install blah" you have a 1/3 chance of downloading a project from source forge.

restated:

I'd like to see the statistics comparing github, gitorious, bitbucket, google code, heck, even codeplex. SourceForge is no longer the only goto for compiling from source, either.

Re: The OS Wars: We Have A Winner

#27
post #17
post #6

Unsurprisingly, Windows dominates with more downloads than all others combined.

As mentioned in lots of other comments, Linux users go to their package manager -- an App Store that runs 100% off promotions 24/7. Mac users have an App Store now. Windows users are still using SourceForge.

Actually, I expect that Mac users are overrepresented: every time you go "brew install blah" there's a good chance you're downloading off of SourceForge.

Re: The OS Wars: We Have A Winner

#28

This article is an example of how not to visualize data. The charts are not helpful in any way.

God, yes. It frustrated me so much that I ended up just copying the data into JS arrays and generating my own charts using the Google Visualization API. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/25782/sourceforge.html Pretty eye-opening. What's clear is that the 'Other' category brings so much uncertainty to the data that it renders the data virtually useless.

I found stacked area to work really well:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6353242/hn/sourceforge-area-normaliz...

You can get a real sense for how large the 'other' datapoint is by looking at non-normalized view as well:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6353242/hn/sourceforge-area.html

Re: The OS Wars: We Have A Winner

#30

Linux downloads have declined because most developers get binaries from their distribution and fewer and fewer old projects (i.e. those from source forge) need to be downloaded as source. OS X is a backwater as far as binary distribution is concerned and so developers have to use brew or macports. Every time you do "brew install blah" you have a 1/3 chance of downloading a project from source forge.

FWIW I was being curious:

    $ cd /usr/local/Library/Formula
    $ ls -l | wc -l
    1807
    $ cat * | grep url | grep sourceforge | wc -l
    396
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