is 42,000 a lot?

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Emma Jane Hogbin writes:
 > Hello,
 > 
 > I was just looking at the revised text for the Bazaar home page. We now say:
 > 
 > "Bazaar is used by more than 42,000 users on over 9,000 projects"
 > 
 > Is 42,000 a lot? It doesn't seem like very many to me...

Well, I don't think you should expect the same level of uptake as
Microsoft Word, <BACKPAT>at least not until your new homepage has been
up for a few weeks</BACKPAT>.

I'd say it's a lot for a hacker tool.  It's definitely enough to
suggest that there's momentum and a lot of eyes looking for bugs, etc.

 > 9,000 projects seems good though. As written it looks as though
 > each project has an average of less than five contributors. This
 > can't possibly be right, can it?

Actually, it's not as good as you think.  Bazaar has 41,999
contributors, and one 13-year-old girl in Ghana is responsible for the
other 8,999 projects ....

More seriously, yes, the number of contributors per project is likely
to be small; that's a feature (anybody can *usefully* turn any file
that they edit more than once into a Bazaar project, right?)  But
contributors are likely to work on more than one project using Bazaar.
In theory all 9,000 projects could have 42,000 contributors. :-)