

The OS Wars: We Have A Winner - webwanderings
http://sourceforge.net/blog/os-wars/

======
onedognight
Linux downloads have declined because most developers get binaries from their
distribution and fewer and fewer old projects (i.e. those from source forge)
need to be downloaded as source.

OS X is a backwater as far as binary distribution is concerned and so
developers have to use brew or macports. Every time you do "brew install blah"
you have a 1/3 chance of downloading a project from source forge.

~~~
lloeki
FWIW I was being curious:

    
    
        $ cd /usr/local/Library/Formula
        $ ls -l | wc -l
        1807
        $ cat * | grep url | grep sourceforge | wc -l
        396

------
robin_reala
I can’t remember the last time I found a project hosted on SourceForge.
Actually, I can, it was <http://webcam-osx.sourceforge.net/> about 4 years
ago. I assumed everyone had moved en masse to Github?

~~~
icebraining
Not everyone likes Git, and SF offers other niceties like forums and mailing
lists.

~~~
yxhuvud
Yes, and those that want those things tend to end up on google code nowadays -
not at SF.

------
xm1994
I think they need to work on their data collection. The unknown "Other" is
almost as large as the other OS categories combined. This makes it hard to
draw any conclusions.

------
metachris
The reasons why the number of sourceforge visitors with Linux is declining
might also include GitHub, which became hugely popular in this crowd.

~~~
andyking
They seem to have counted downloads, rather than site visitors.

The decline in Sourceforge downloads by Linux users is likely to be down to
the fact that most will simply grab the package from their distro's
repository, rather than getting it from SF. If I download, say, FileZilla on
my Windows machine, I get it via Sourceforge. On my Ubuntu box, it's in the
repo.

~~~
Tsiolkovsky
Yeah that's how I get almost all the software for my GNU/Linux boxen, all from
repositories. And if I'm hacking on something just pull it out from Git or BZR
or SVN or similar. Many projects also left SF since they started with changes
that made it a bit of pain to use.

------
jcampbell1
This article is an example of how _not_ to visualize data. The charts are not
helpful in any way.

~~~
warpdude
God, yes. It frustrated me so much that I ended up just copying the data into
JS arrays and generating my own charts using the Google Visualization API.

<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/25782/sourceforge.html>

Pretty eye-opening. What's clear is that the 'Other' category brings so much
uncertainty to the data that it renders the data virtually useless.

~~~
bradleyland
I found stacked area to work really well:

[http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6353242/hn/sourceforge-area-
normaliz...](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6353242/hn/sourceforge-area-
normalized.html)

You can get a real sense for how large the 'other' datapoint is by looking at
non-normalized view as well:

<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6353242/hn/sourceforge-area.html>

------
zecg
Ubuntu and Launchpad PPA? Github? This article is pretty much pointless and
the visualizations are horrible.

------
johanbev
Please note how the "other" category consists of nearly half of the downloads.
I would say that this adds a lot of uncertainity in this dataset. Without
knowing the distribution of the OS-es that shows up in "other" this data is
pretty much meaningless.

------
webrisource
Good to see data ming on this... it's been obvious in my work circles through
2011 so far. "Real stuff" is getting done on Mac OS, not just visual and
content.

------
jimktrains2
What's with the table as a picture?

------
billpatrianakos
That was not a good article at all. The title is misleading and the content
has little to nothing to do with "OS Wars". We all know the users are
benefitting from the 3 big competing OSes. Then they go on to basically say
"hey, look at us, we're still relevant! We have some Analytics data that you
should read as coming from a major authority".

I have nothing against SF at all but this kind of sounded like a call for
attention. They talk about this data like its the final word on the subject
but leave out so many other really popular resources where people get their
apps like App Stores, Package Managers, GitHub, etc.

And what OS wars? This is 2011 not 1997. The OS makers are competing but
they're not trying to be all things to all people like in the old days. We've
got Linux distros for all types of users from sys admins (Arch, CentOS) to
casual users (Ubuntu and other Debian based distros). The Mac has its own
uniqueness that appeals to a broad audience and some people want their old
standard, Windows. Some are gaining ground, others losing, but it's not like
10 or 15 years ago where people were looking for a winner. Some people are
still and I'd say that's kind of dumb and jingoism has a bit to do with that.

This article should have had the title "SourceForge Sees Major Increase in
Downloads from NameofOS". I call link bait.

------
rajpaul
Unsurprisingly, Windows dominates with more downloads than all others
combined.

~~~
sounds
As mentioned in lots of other comments, Linux users go to their package
manager -- an App Store that runs 100% off promotions 24/7.

Mac users have an App Store now.

Windows users are still using SourceForge.

~~~
bryanlarsen
Actually, I expect that Mac users are overrepresented: every time you go "brew
install blah" there's a good chance you're downloading off of SourceForge.

------
CPlatypus
The difference between the OS distribution on SourceForge and the OS
distribution in the real world only shows how irrelevant SourceForge has made
itself.

------
funkah
Oof, those charts could be a lot better. Someone get Horace Dediu in here.

