Re: downloads...genuine?

Hello, on 08/25/2005 06:31 AM Matthew Peters said the following:

The PECL package statistics for our sdo project show a goodly number of downloads, > 300, but we have not had many bug reports or other feedback. We are just wondering whether these downloads are all genuine or whether there is some automated download process which is artifically bumping these numbers. Is there any way to tell?

My guess is that (practically) nobody is really using that. Looking closer at your package it is not surprising. There are a few details that make it evident: - Your package relies on PHP 5. PHP 5 is a flop. Meaning that very few people are really using PHP 5. Some people may find that arguable, but the numbers speak for themselves. After more than 1 year after PHP 5.0.0 was released, only 3.5% of the hosts expose the usage of PHP 5. http://www.nexen.net/interview/index.php?id=49#versionm - Very few people know about PECL, and consequently any packages available through it. In terms of awareness, Open Source products are not different from commercial products. If you do not advertise them well, nobody knows about it. I know that Zend is paying to advertise PECL but some details are not helping. For instance, the name PECL means nothing to most people. If it was named something like PHP*, that would be a much more effective name. The same goes for SDO name. - PECL packages are not plug-and-play. It means you can't download the packages and try them right away. I know there are precompiled binaries for Windows, but even these are secret. A link to the snaps.php.net is obviously needed there. If you go to any PECL package page all you are informed about is the download of the source code. 99.999999% of the users will do nothing with the source code because either they do not have a development environment to compile and test or do not have the knowlegde to do that. It would be better if there were maybe a few PHP version independent rpm packages ready for download at least for the main Linux distributions. - Other reasons could be brought up, but I think the reasons above are the most important to justify the lack of interest on your package, some of which you can do something about. -- Regards, Manuel Lemos PHP Classes - Free ready to use OOP components written in PHP http://www.phpclasses.org/ PHP Reviews - Reviews of PHP books and other products http://www.phpclasses.org/reviews/ Metastorage - Data object relational mapping layer generator http://www.meta-language.net/metastorage.html