Guix user statistics and upstream/downstream dependencies

Guix user statistics and upstream/downstream dependencies

[John Kehayias]

Hi Guix-ers,

I have been working on putting in a concept note (to be hopefully
invited for a full proposal) for the Open Technology Sustainability
Fund (thanks Maxim for posting this earlier!). My goal would be to get
support for some broad and deep improvements to Guix around
user/contributor workflows, governance and organization, and generally
improving our response to bugs/patches/feature work. Unfortunately
this comes at a very busy time of year for me, and just before I head
off for some travel.

Anyway, I wanted to ask if there is any info or statistics anyone has
to help with some project information they request:

1. Users & Beneficiaries: Provide an overview of the project’s user
   base, their demographics and statistics, and any other indirect
   beneficiaries.

2. Dependencies: Provide an overview of the project’s software
   upstream and downstream dependencies.

For the first, maybe someone has some unofficial surveys or things
like download stats, mirrors, etc.?

A Guix user/contributor survey came up in the past and is one I would
propose doing as part of this proposal as I think we are lacking some
useful information.

For the second, obviously we depend on things like Guile and Shepherd,
as well as everything that makes a distro tick (packages). But what
about downstream?

I know Guix is used for some research, high performance computing,
...what else do people know of or anywhere we mention this? (Would be
great to have a "powered by Guix" on our website, by the way!)

Anyway, any useful information please do send my way (privately if you
prefer)! I will need to wrap this up by the 15th unfortunately, and
probably a long shot, but would be fantastic to get some funding to be
able to work full time on Guix. And if I make it to the proposal stage
I'll be reaching out to put together more formal pieces and recruiting
people that would like to work on any funded work.

Thanks all!
John

Re: Guix user statistics and upstream/downstream dependencies

[Nicolas Graves via Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution.]

Hi John,

Andrew Tropin and a few contributers are also using and extending Guix
into its own developer and power user friendly GNU/Linux distribution,
you can find more info on the project page :

https://git.sr.ht/~abcdw/rde

Or we can answer any questions you would have with Andrew.


You can also find a collection of channels, packages and services here :

https://toys.whereis.%E3%81%BF%E3%82%93%E3%81%AA (or here if badly pasted : https://git.sr.ht/~whereiseveryone/toys)

There are probably multiple projects of interest there for you.

Cheers,

Nicolas


On 2024-05-13 05:13, John Kehayias wrote:

> Hi Guix-ers,
>
> I have been working on putting in a concept note (to be hopefully
> invited for a full proposal) for the Open Technology Sustainability
> Fund (thanks Maxim for posting this earlier!). My goal would be to get
> support for some broad and deep improvements to Guix around
> user/contributor workflows, governance and organization, and generally
> improving our response to bugs/patches/feature work. Unfortunately
> this comes at a very busy time of year for me, and just before I head
> off for some travel.
>
> Anyway, I wanted to ask if there is any info or statistics anyone has
> to help with some project information they request:
>
> 1. Users & Beneficiaries: Provide an overview of the project’s user
>    base, their demographics and statistics, and any other indirect
>    beneficiaries.
>
> 2. Dependencies: Provide an overview of the project’s software
>    upstream and downstream dependencies.
>
> For the first, maybe someone has some unofficial surveys or things
> like download stats, mirrors, etc.?
>
> A Guix user/contributor survey came up in the past and is one I would
> propose doing as part of this proposal as I think we are lacking some
> useful information.
>
> For the second, obviously we depend on things like Guile and Shepherd,
> as well as everything that makes a distro tick (packages). But what
> about downstream?
>
> I know Guix is used for some research, high performance computing,
> ...what else do people know of or anywhere we mention this? (Would be
> great to have a "powered by Guix" on our website, by the way!)
>
> Anyway, any useful information please do send my way (privately if you
> prefer)! I will need to wrap this up by the 15th unfortunately, and
> probably a long shot, but would be fantastic to get some funding to be
> able to work full time on Guix. And if I make it to the proposal stage
> I'll be reaching out to put together more formal pieces and recruiting
> people that would like to work on any funded work.
>
> Thanks all!
> John
>
>

-- 
Best regards,
Nicolas Graves

Re: Guix user statistics and upstream/downstream dependencies

[Maxim Cournoyer]

Hi John,

John Kehayias <john.kehayias@protonmail.com> writes:

> Hi Guix-ers,
>
> I have been working on putting in a concept note (to be hopefully
> invited for a full proposal) for the Open Technology Sustainability
> Fund (thanks Maxim for posting this earlier!). My goal would be to get
> support for some broad and deep improvements to Guix around
> user/contributor workflows, governance and organization, and generally
> improving our response to bugs/patches/feature work. Unfortunately
> this comes at a very busy time of year for me, and just before I head
> off for some travel.
>
> Anyway, I wanted to ask if there is any info or statistics anyone has
> to help with some project information they request:
>
> 1. Users & Beneficiaries: Provide an overview of the project’s user
>    base, their demographics and statistics, and any other indirect
>    beneficiaries.
>
> 2. Dependencies: Provide an overview of the project’s software
>    upstream and downstream dependencies.
>
> For the first, maybe someone has some unofficial surveys or things
> like download stats, mirrors, etc.?

We have detailed anonymized nginx logs of all downloaded substitutes
from Berlin, at least.  If you are interested to use this data as a
source we could probably make it available to you since it's anonymized
(real IP addresses have been obfuscated).

-- 
Thanks,
Maxim

Re: Guix user statistics and upstream/downstream dependencies

[Wilko Meyer]

Hi John,

John Kehayias <john.kehayias@protonmail.com> writes:

> For the first, maybe someone has some unofficial surveys or things
> like download stats, mirrors, etc.?

I'm aware of https://openhub.net/p/gnuguix which gathers simple
statistics on contributions.

There's also https://repology.org/ for statistics on package
availability if that matters.

> I know Guix is used for some research, high performance computing,
> ...what else do people know of or anywhere we mention this? (Would be
> great to have a "powered by Guix" on our website, by the way!)

Off the top of my head, besides usage in HPC as well as research, guix is
used as a part of the development workflow of software projects (if I
recall this right nyxt as well as bitcoin are two more well known of
them I've recently read about). I also read about gov.uk guix usage
somewhere, though I'm pretty certain other folks on this mailing list
know more about it and its details than I do.

-- 
Kind regards,

Wilko Meyer
w@wmeyer.eu