Preparing for my big move/change has inspired me to share some statistics which perhaps normally I wouldn’t be so forthcoming about, namely: how many people have downloaded my software?
The following table shows the top downloads from both www.jujusoft.com and drivey.com since July 2003. Some of the numbers are impressive, others are quite lame. Many files listed here have not been available for some time, eg the sample ebooks– I would have added the individual timespans for each file, but such information is very tedious to extract.
|
File |
Downloads |
Notes |
| Drivey 0.13 | 73,785 | the slashdotted version |
| Drivey 0.15 | 7,595 | post-slashdot, cleaned up a bit (no audio) |
| Drivey 0.12 | 2,728 | pre-slashdot |
| JujuTool 1.06 | 530 | schizophrenic little tool, dodgy but useful |
| JujuEdit 1.43 | 454 | text/binary editor |
| Drivey 0.02 | 406 | |
| Drivey 0.10 | 256 | |
| JujuEdit 1.42 | 253 | |
| Drivey 0.11 | 247 | |
| scrnplay.zip | 191 | screenplay template for MS word |
| ps_plugs.zip | 184 | grid rendering plugin for Photoshop 6+ |
| JujuEdit 1.31 | 172 | last year’s version |
| BookReader 0.98 | 161 | eBook reader (see here for download) |
| jujucalc.exe | 160 | terrible calculator |
| The Time Machine | 143 | e-book (as self-contained exe) |
| elibrary 1.1 | 97 | not available |
| The War of the Worlds | 87 | e-book |
| Dorian Gray | 71 | e-book |
| Treasure Island | 66 | e-book |
| elibrary 1.08 | 63 | |
| Huck Finn | 61 | e-book |
| BookReader 0.97 | 61 | |
| Tom Sawyer | 60 | e-book |
| Wizard of Oz | 55 | e-book |
| jujuedit 1.41 | 48 | |
| jujuedit 1.301 | 44 | |
| BookReader 0.96 | 44 | |
| george_demo.zip | 40 | old demo featuring early software 3d tinkering |
Note that the “serious” applications are somewhat dwarfed in popularity by Drivey, even before the slashdotting. After three years online [!] JujuEdit is only just now starting to increase its numbers, largely due to a couple of recent mentions on tech sites (see here and here ). Since I use JujuEdit all the time it will definitely survive regardless of the numbers, although updates will probably be minor [nothing new there].
Now that I really look at this table, the numbers for BookReader are so low I’m wondering if there’s some sort of error with my reading of the server logs– people ask about it a lot since version 0.98 expired, so I ended up modifying the exe to never expire and posting it here. I do want to get one more version out, with less confusing interface and UTF-8 support, but it may be some time before that actually appears.
Set it free…?
Several people have asked me why I don’t open source [GPL, etc] my projects, especially if I’m not going to have the time to work on them. It’s something I’ve tried to consider, but to be blunt the idea just doesn’t thrill me– and since once it’s done you can’t take it back I would want to be pretty damn certain before taking that course. In fact, the only reason I’m considering it at all is because people occasionally hassle me to do so, but if I were to do it then surely that would invite more people to hassle me, with questions about the code itself…?
NB I strongly support the notion of free system level code [code that defines the platform or environment] but where applications are concerned... not so much. If anyone wants to change my mind about this, a good place to start would be to point out some real world examples of open source applications which have successfully made the transition from proprietary code, and maybe I'll think more about it.