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#!/bin/sh
#
# To start fetchmail as a system service, copy this file to
# /etc/init.d/fetchmail and run "update-rc.d fetchmail
# defaults".  A fetchmailrc file containg hosts and
# passwords for all local users should be placed in /root
# and should contain a line of the form "set daemon <nnn>".
#
# To remove the service, delete /etc/init.d/fetchmail and run
# "update-rc.d fetchmail remove".

DAEMON=/usr/bin/fetchmail

set -e
test -f $DAEMON || exit 0

case "$1" in
  start)
        echo -n "Starting mail retrieval agent: "
        if start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --exec $DAEMON; then echo "fetchmail."
        else echo "fetchmail already running."; fi
        ;;
  stop)
        echo -n "Stopping mail retrieval agent: "
        start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --exec $DAEMON
        echo "fetchmail."
        ;;
  force-reload|restart)
        echo -n "Restarting mail retrieval agent: "
        start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --exec $DAEMON
        start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --exec $DAEMON
        echo "fetchmail."
        ;;
  *)
        echo "Usage: /etc/init.d/fetchmail {start|stop|restart}"
        exit 1
        ;;
esac

exit 0
pan.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>