RE: [DISCUSS] Apache OpenOffice ODF in the Marketplace - Downloading

["Dennis E. Hamilton" <de...@acm.org>]

Here is a rough, top-level view of Apache OpenOffice by the operating systems it is downloaded for.  This should be no surprise.  To have some grounding on the immediate situation, here are the downloading statistics of Apache OpenOffice 4.1.1 so far.

>From Sourceforge, <http://sourceforge.net/projects/openofficeorg.mirror/files/4.1.1/stats/os?dates=2014-08-01+to+2015-08-31>.

Of the 41 million downloads that have occurred since release of 4.1.1, until the end of August, 

    87.7% are for Windows
     9.1% are for Macintosh
     3.2% is everything else, including Linux

We know some sources of noise, but the overall picture is very clear and very decisive.  

For example, some users download multiple times as a form of (usually-unsuccessful) trouble-shooting.  We know about that because the next step for some is to come to the forums or one of our mailing lists after those attempts fail.

There are also folks who download for use by multiple people and there may be some distribution via package installers that are not visible here.  That can't change the high-level pattern by much in the case of AOO.

The overall pattern of downloads, with no separation by version, can be seen in the chart from 2012-10-01 (around when Apache OpenOffice became an official top-level project) to 2015-08-31.  You can see consistent seasonal variation and also detect when new releases were introduced,
<http://sourceforge.net/projects/openofficeorg.mirror/files/stats/timeline?dates=2012-10-01+to+2015-08-31>.

A more interesting statistic to notice, apart from the perpetual dominance of Windows and Macintosh users in the AOO "marketplace" is the fact that only about 16-17% of the downloads occur in the United States.

The SourceForge statistics are easy to operate with.  For refined analysis there are datasets and analysis scripts that Rob Weir has provided at <https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/openoffice/devtools/aoo-stats/>.

What is more difficult to determine is what folks are actually doing with Apache OpenOffice.  There may be ways to learn more.  

 - Dennis



-----Original Message-----
From: Dennis E. Hamilton [mailto:dennis.hamilton@acm.org] 
Sent: Friday, September 4, 2015 20:01
To: dev@openoffice.apache.org
Subject: [DISCUSS] Apache OpenOffice ODF in the Marketplace

I had not encountered the topic of "ODF in the market place" with regard to status of Apache OpenOffice.  Perhaps I have not been paying attention.

I am curious how we might characterize how support for ODF matters to Apache OpenOffice users and various institutions that value support for ODF in their reliance on Apache OpenOffice and related software.

How can we determine what the influence of ODF is with respect to Apache OpenOffice?

It strikes me there are two parts to this question.  

 1. Who are the users of Apache OpenOffice?

 2. What are the ways ODF is (comparatively) significant to those users?  

[ ... ]

WHO ARE THE USERS?

Although there are now over 150 million downloads of Apache OpenOffice, that does not tell us how many individual users are involved.

Perhaps the download counts just for AOO 4.1.1 would be a representable sample of a particularly-active segment of the user base, even though that would be underestimated a couple of ways.  But that, and the average weekly rate would be useful as "at least" figures.

The mix of platforms for those downloads is also important, reflecting the context in which those installed downloads are used by new users and those who are keeping their configurations current.


[ ... ]


---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscribe@openoffice.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: dev-help@openoffice.apache.org