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* Convert most references from berlios.de to sourceforge.net.Matthias Andree2014-05-211-1/+2
* Link the two TODO documents to each other.Matthias Andree2009-05-241-0/+3
* Clean out obsolete items.Matthias Andree2006-03-031-15/+0
* Move TODO into todo.html.Matthias Andree2005-07-031-47/+52
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* Fix patch for Sunil Shetye's POP3 tweaks.Eric S. Raymond2004-01-131-2/+25
* Close a Debian bug.Eric S. Raymond2003-10-101-2/+13
* First round ofmlong-delayed bug fixes.Eric S. Raymond2003-07-171-2/+4
* Documentation updates.Eric S. Raymond2003-02-281-2/+11
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* Fix a minor bug reported by Matthias Andree.Eric S. Raymond2002-09-171-31/+2
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* XML conversionEric S. Raymond2002-07-281-93/+108
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* Initial version of ESMTP AUTH.Eric S. Raymond2002-03-091-7/+2
* Note a new bug.Eric S. Raymond2001-12-141-2/+8
* License cleanup.Eric S. Raymond2001-09-301-10/+2
* Eliminate a bug.Eric S. Raymond2001-09-241-5/+2
* Added TODO about license com[patibility.Eric S. Raymond2001-09-221-2/+10
* Ready to ship.Eric S. Raymond2001-08-101-2/+6
* Updated buglist.Eric S. Raymond2001-07-311-38/+21
* Note Paul Howarth's error.Eric S. Raymond2001-07-061-2/+19
* Resady to ship.Eric S. Raymond2001-05-301-2/+5
* SSL certification handling.Eric S. Raymond2001-05-141-5/+3
* Version bump.Eric S. Raymond2001-02-191-3/+3
* Initial revisionEric S. Raymond2001-02-111-0/+74
generated by cgit v1.2.3 (git 2.39.1) at 2025-11-15 22:45:19 +0000
pan>="keywords" content="fetchmail, growth, analysis" /> <title>Trends in the fetchmail project's growth</title> <style type="text/css"> /*<![CDATA[*/ span.c6 {color: brown} span.c5 {color: red} span.c4 {color: lime} span.c3 {color: blue} div.c2 {text-align: 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 2025-11-15 22:45:19 +0000