is 42,000 a lot?

[Ian Clatworthy]

Emma Jane Hogbin wrote:

> Compare this to http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/stats/
> where they have: 305,926,189 downloads (note that it's downloads counted, not 
> "contributors"). 

Our primary competitors are Subversion, Git and Mercurial - these aren't
consumer products (like Firefox or iTunes). The potential audience is
completely different and 42k is a healthy number.

> I'd be +1 for removing the number of people using Bazaar on the front page of 
> the site and listing only the number of projects using Bazaar.

We may reword things but the user count is staying. Canonical wants to
get the word out that Bazaar is well loved and that projects can adopt
it without fear. We aren't as popular as Git yet but all 3 main DVCS
products are *much* less popular than Subversion (so choosing on
popularity alone isn't smart).

The figure is taken from the download count for bzr 1.13 (the version in
Ubuntu 9.04). It *only* covers users downloading the Windows installer,
OS X installer or tar.gz. There's *another* 38,000 users who have
installed Bazaar via a package manager on Ubuntu (see popcon.ubuntu.com)
which we're leaving out in the name of being conservative. I'll put
together a Wiki page today explaining the number's origin.

Ian C.