[petsc-dev] Statistics on the popularity of PETSc

[Barry Smith]

  It is essentially impossible to get good numbers. Satish can report the number of ftp downloads but that means little because the same people download multiple times, and demons download regularly plus many people use git to access the source code. Counts from git are also no useful because we don't know who is actually using what they download. 

  Having every PETSc program when run (or linked) report back to the mothership has been rightly vetoed as too intrusive so I don't know how to get good numbers. The number of citations of the users manual gives a lower bound on the number of publications that presumably (most of them) use PETSc but that is integrated over many years so doesn't give a useful recent count. 

  If you ask, how many separate people have run (knowingly or not knowingly) a PETSc application/program in the last year I would say a lower bound is 500 and  upper bound could be 10,000 or more but this is gross speculation.

  I'd be happy to hear any ideas on how to get numbers (survey's don't work well for this IMHO).

  Barry


> On Sep 10, 2020, at 3:29 PM, Zhang, Hong via petsc-dev <petsc-dev at mcs.anl.gov> wrote:
> 
> Someone asks about the number of PETSc users. Do we have relevant info?
> Hong

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