Emacs's popularity (was: Distributed Maintenance for Emacs)

[Teemu Likonen <tlikonen@iki.fi>]

Leo (2008-12-15 18:24 +0000) wrote:

> On 2008-12-14 21:37 +0000, Xah Lee wrote:
>> I really feel sorry emacs's user base is dying. The most important
>> thing i think is to get emacs to use modern terminologies and be
>> compatible with the minimum of standard modern UI.
>
> Users are not scared off by Emacs's UI. It is more important its
> functionality.

Are people being scared off in the first place? I mean more than
normally. :-)

I don't know but at least among Debian GNU/Linux users Emacs's
popularity doesn't seem to have decreased. Here's a Debian popularity
contest[1] graph that shows the popularity of packages emacs21,
emacs21-nox, emacs22, emacs22-nox and emacs22-gtk:

    http://preview.tinyurl.com/55stry [2]

The graph shows that Emacs22 started gaining popularity around mid-2007
(the release) and Emacs21 started losing it. Those summed together Emacs
is no less popular than before. The latest official Debian release (4.0
"Etch") includes Emacs21.

This popularity measurement category is called "vote". It means that
user has accessed (atime) the files in the package within 30 days. It
roughly means that the software is actually being used, not only
installed.


---------------
[1] http://popcon.debian.org/

[2] http://qa.debian.org/popcon-graph.php?packages=emacs21%2Cemacs21-nox%2Cemacs22%2Cemacs22-gtk%2Cemacs22-nox&show_vote=on&want_legend=on&from_date=&to_date=&hlght_date=&date_fmt=%25Y-%25m&beenhere=1