Re: gnus and pine

[Reiner Steib <reinersteib+gmane@imap.cc>]

On Mon, Dec 22 2008, Sivaram Neelakantan wrote:

> Xavier Maillard <xma@gnu.org> writes:
> [...]
>>> I would be interested to know if there are statistics about the
>>> gnus userbase.
>>
>> Gnus is popular but I am pretty comfident there are not that much
>> users.
[...]
> b) why are you working on MSDOS screens (I have a white on black
> screen setup for Emacs)

I'd guess pine users would get the same question.

> Methinks, Gnus followers must be in the low thousands which itself
> might be optimistic? :-)

Here are some data points:

(1) Debian popularity contest statistics for alpine,gnus:

    <http://qa.debian.org/popcon-graph.php?packages=alpine%2Cgnus&show_vote=on&from_date=2007-01-01>

    Shows that pine (alpine) has approximately 3 times more users than
    (al)pine.

    Problem: You don't no need to use the separate Debian package
    "gnus" because Gnus is also part of the Emacs packages (emacsNN*),
    AFAICS.

(2) Gmane Posting user agents statistics (mailing lists to news
    gateway)

    <http://gmane.org/user-agents.php>

    Display comparable numbers of users for pine (3.2%) and Gnus
    (2.2%).

    Problems: Quite outdated.  Dunno if only posting thru Gmane is
    counted (i.e. users sending messages via NNTP) or if the stats
    also count mails received from the mailing lists.

(3) Posting statistics for de.* (usenet)

    This is a statistic on the number of post, not about the number of
    users for German language newsgroups.

    <news:stats-reader-11.2008@news.arcor.de>
    http://www.google.com/groups?as_umsgid=stats-reader-11.2008@news.arcor.de

    (Translated ...)
    Posting statistic for de.* 11.2008
    User-Agent|X-Newsreader|X-Mailer TOP100:
    Percent Number  Type
    ---------------------------------------------------------
    19.55    30366  Thunderbird
    11.08    17204  Microsoft Outlook Express
     9.77    15168  Mozilla
     9.09    14112  Forte Agent
     8.15    12657  40tude_Dialog
     7.25    11257  <unsigned>
     7.23    11237  G2/1.0
     3.41     5289  KNode
     2.94     4562  aktienboard forums
     2.36     3661  tin
     2.29     3554  MacSOUP
     2.26     3511  slrn
     2.00     3103  Xnews
     1.68     2605  Gnus
     0.93     1441  Forte Free Agent
     0.77     1203  Pan
     0.73     1128  Microsoft Windows Mail 6.0.6001.18000
     0.70     1091  MicroPlanet-Gravity/2.70.2067
     0.65     1016  OpenXP
     0.64     1000  Hamster
     0.48      749  Newsoffice.de - based on NewsPortal
     0.48      748  Opera
     0.45      703  Sylpheed
     0.33      512  FreeXP (CrossPoint)
     0.31      482  ProNews
     0.27      423  bleachbot
     0.26      397  MT-NewsWatcher
     0.26      397  Microsoft Windows Live Mail 12.0.1606
     0.19      302  trn
          [...]  
     0.02       36  Alpine 1.10 (LNX 962 2008-03-14)

Bye, Reiner.
-- 
       ,,,
      (o o)
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