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-<HR>
-<H1 ALIGN=CENTER>Trends in the fetchmail project's growth</H1>
-
-The scattergram below was made with Gnuplot 3.7 from data pulled
-directly out of the project NEWS file using two custom shellscripts,
-<a href="timeseries">timeseries</a> and <a
-href="growthplot">growthplot</a>. If you see a broken-image icon, upgrade
-to a <a href="http://www.cdrom.com/pub/png/pngapbr.html">browser that
-can view PNGs</a>.<p>
-
-<center><img src="growth.png"></center><p>
-
-The graph shows the population growth of the fetchmail project. The
-horizontal scale is days since baseline, which is when I started
-collecting statistics in October 1996 at version 1.9.0. Left vertical
-scale is number of participants. There is one data point for each
-release; therefore, the changes in density of marks indicate release
-frequency.<p>
-
-The peak in the earliest part of the graph (before the note "Bad
+
+<hr />
+<h1 class="c1">Trends in the fetchmail project's growth</h1>
+
+<p>The scattergram below was made with Gnuplot 3.7 from data pulled
+directly out of the project NEWS file using two custom
+shellscripts, <a href="timeseries">timeseries</a> and <a
+href="growthplot">growthplot</a>. If you see a broken-image icon,
+upgrade to a <a
+href="http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/pngapbr.html">browser that can
+view PNGs</a>.</p>
+
+<div class="c2"><img src="growth.png"
+alt="Fetchmail trends graph" /></div>
+
+<p>The graph shows the population growth of the fetchmail project.
+The horizontal scale is days since baseline, which is when I
+started collecting statistics in October 1996 at version 1.9.0.
+Left vertical scale is number of participants. There is one data
+point for each release; therefore, the changes in density of marks
+indicate release frequency.</p>
+
+<p>The peak in the earliest part of the graph (before the note "Bad
addresses dropped") seems to be an artifact; I was not regularly
-dropping addresses that became invalid at the time. Turnover on the
+dropping addresses that became invalid at the time. Turnover on the
list seems to be about 5% per month (but that's just my estimate, I
-don't have numbers on this).<p>
+don't have numbers on this).</p>
-The <font color="blue">blue scatter of squares</font> is total
-participants. The <font color="lime">green scatter of crosses</font> is
-the count of people on fetchmail-friends after I split the list. The
-<font color="purple">violet scatter of triangles</font> is the population
-of fetchmail-announce after the split.<P>
+<p>The <span class="c3">blue scatter of squares</span> is total
+participants. The <span class="c4">green scatter of crosses</span>
+is the count of people on fetchmail-friends after I split the list.
+The <span class="c5">cyan scatter of diamonds</span> is the
+population of fetchmail-announce after the split.</p>
-The <font color="brown">brown scatter of diamonds</font> tracks project
-size in lines of code (right vertical axis). The scale relationship
-between this scatter and the other three is arbitrary.<p>
+<p>The <span class="c6">brown scatter of diamonds</span> tracks
+project size in lines of code (right vertical axis). The scale
+relationship between this scatter and the other three is
+arbitrary.</p>
-This graph is quite revealing. Several trends stand out: <p>
+<p>This graph is quite revealing. Several trends stand out:</p>
<ul>
<li>
-Over time, the project population displays rather consistent linear growth.<p>
+<p>Over time, the project population displays rather consistent
+linear growth.</p>
+</li>
<li>
-The key event in the project's lifetime was release 4.3.0 in October
-1997, when I declared the code to be out of development and in
-maintainance mode, and split the fetchmail list.<p>
+<p>The key event in the project's lifetime was release 4.3.0 in
+October 1997, when I declared the code to be out of development and
+in maintainance mode, and split the fetchmail list.</p>
+</li>
<li>
-The run-up to 4.3.0 saw the most intensive spate of releases in the
-project's history (the gap in that run happened when I took a two-week
-vacation). It was followed by a significant slowdown.<p>
+<p>The run-up to 4.3.0 saw the most intensive spate of releases in
+the project's history (the gap in that run happened when I took a
+two-week vacation). It was followed by a significant slowdown.</p>
+</li>
<li>
-After 4.3.0, the developer population remained fairly stable around
-an average of about 250 participants.<p>
+<p>After 4.3.0, the developer population remained fairly stable
+around an average of about 250 participants.</p>
+</li>
<li>
-Essentially all population growth after 4.3.0 happened on the announce list,
-among people using fetchmail but not active co-developers.<p>
+<p>Essentially all population growth after 4.3.0 happened on the
+announce list, among people using fetchmail but not active
+co-developers.</p>
+</li>
<li>
-The growth trend in code size looks sublinear, perhaps logarithmic.
+<p>The growth trend in code size looks sublinear, perhaps
+logarithmic.</p>
+</li>
</ul>
-The linear growth trend in population is particularly interesting; a
-priori we might expect geometric or logistic growth, given that the
-project spreads by word of mouth. I have not yet been able to
-plausibly imagine a growth model that would produce these numbers.<p>
-
-There are some other pages doing similar things:<p>
+<p>The linear growth trend in population is particularly
+interesting; a priori we might expect geometric or logistic growth,
+given that the project spreads by word of mouth.</p>
-<ul>
-<li>
-<a href="http://kitenet.net/programs/debhelper/stats/">Here</a>
-are growth statistics on the debhelper packaging utility.<p>
-
-<li>
-<a href="http://durak.org:81/sean/pubs/kfc/">Here</a> is a page on the
-vocabulary of the Linux kernel.<p>
-</ul>
+<p>It has been suggested that the linear growth rate is the result
+of a situation in which both number of projects and the population
+of eligible programmers are rising on trend curves of the same
+(probably exponential) rate.</p>
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projects / ~andy / fetchmail / blobdiff