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* STEP 3: File pointer arguments in SockGets()/SockPuts().Eric S. Raymond1996-10-311-1/+1
* STEP 1: Make all methods take file pointer arguments.Eric S. Raymond1996-10-311-16/+16
* gcc -Wall cleanup.Eric S. Raymond1996-10-261-2/+5
* Major changes of data structure and variable names.Eric S. Raymond1996-10-261-13/+13
* Added filtering by length. Ugh.Eric S. Raymond1996-10-261-0/+1
* Major improvements in --check processing. New-message count is now visible.Eric S. Raymond1996-10-191-2/+3
* Remove all those obnoxious block comments.Eric S. Raymond1996-10-171-9/+7
* RC file syntax change, folder->mailbox, remote->remotename.Eric S. Raymond1996-10-041-2/+2
* Make the check for whether --flush and --all work protocol-independent.Eric S. Raymond1996-10-021-10/+0
* Reverse order of arguments in OK method.Eric S. Raymond1996-10-021-2/+2
* Simplify the driver main loop.Eric S. Raymond1996-10-011-5/+3
* The great options massacre.Eric S. Raymond1996-09-281-7/+2
* With any luck, this is a correct implementation of UIDL support.Eric S. Raymond1996-09-281-1/+2
* Eliminate unnecessary verbiage.Eric S. Raymond1996-09-251-6/+0
* Eliminate some unnecessary headers.Eric S. Raymond1996-09-251-18/+3
* POP2 now goes through the generic driver.Eric S. Raymond1996-09-251-506/+114
* Quiet the program down a bit.Eric S. Raymond1996-09-241-3/+6
* The great name change.Eric S. Raymond1996-09-241-3/+3
* Better protection against buffer overruns.Eric S. Raymond1996-09-231-5/+5
* Added port-specification option.Eric S. Raymond1996-09-121-3/+3
* Most of the way to SMTP forwarding.Eric S. Raymond1996-09-111-0/+2
* Cosmetic change.Eric S. Raymond1996-09-111-3/+7
* Added autoprobe logic.Eric S. Raymond1996-08-261-1/+1
* We have IMAP support.Eric S. Raymond1996-08-261-3/+3
* Change of name.Eric S. Raymond1996-07-031-18/+18
* optrec -> hostrec.Eric S. Raymond1996-07-031-1/+1
* Got rid of line limit member.Eric S. Raymond1996-07-031-1/+1
* Merged hostrec and option structures.Eric S. Raymond1996-07-031-4/+2
* Some name changes.Eric S. Raymond1996-07-021-1/+1
* Licensing and copyright changes pursuant to Carl Harris handing me theEric S. Raymond1996-06-281-53/+4
* This is what I sent Harris.Eric S. Raymond1996-06-261-11/+20
* Initial revisionEric S. Raymond1996-06-241-0/+611
generated by cgit v1.2.3 (git 2.39.1) at 2025-03-17 07:06:00 +0000
n> center} h1.c1 {text-align: center} /*]]>*/ </style> </head> <body> <table width="100%" cellpadding="0" summary="Canned page header"> <tr> <td width="30%" align="right">$Date$</td> </tr> </table> <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 list seems to be about 5% per month (but that's just my estimate, I don't have numbers on this).</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> <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> <p>This graph is quite revealing. Several trends stand out:</p> <ul> <li> <p>Over time, the project population displays rather consistent linear growth.</p> </li> <li> <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> <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> <p>After 4.3.0, the developer population remained fairly stable around an average of about 250 participants.</p> </li> <li> <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> <p>The growth trend in code size looks sublinear, perhaps logarithmic.</p> </li> </ul> <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> <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> <hr /> <table width="100%" cellpadding="0" summary="Canned page header"> <tr> <td width="30%" align="right">$Date$</td> </tr> </table> <br clear="left" /> <address>Eric S. Raymond <a href="mailto:esr@thyrsus.com">&lt;esr@thyrsus.com&gt;</a></address> </body> </html>
generated by cgit v1.2.3 (git 2.39.1) at 2025-03-17 07:06:00 +0000