[marketing-python] most popular Python projects -summary

[Kevin Altis]

This is my current summary list of the most popular Python projects, 
ranked roughly by the number of downloads per month, either actual or 
guesstimate based on mailing list subscribers. I'll probably move this 
info to a wiki page and update it periodically as new information 
becomes available. Based on Mike Fletcher's suggestions, if we were to 
focus our marketing efforts on promoting individual projects or 
promoting the use of Python for a particular application domain then 
the cutoff would be projects below PIL or possibly the less popular GUI 
toolkits (based on mailing list subscribers): PyGTK and PyQT.

Clearly, Python is a much more popular solution for building desktop 
GUIs and as an add-on scripting language than I suspected before 
starting this list. At the same time, anytime there is a discussion 
about building GUIs with Python, someone always mentions that the 
current crop of Python IDEs and layout tools are disappointing compared 
to MS Visual Studio and Borland's Delphi, so that's still an 
opportunity to be filled. Note that Tkinter is not represented below 
because it is bundled with Python.

On the web side of things Zope/Plone are the only standouts, though 
Twisted might fit in as well once we have better stats for it, 
certainly Twisted has a large and active developer base. There are many 
other web libraries and frameworks as shown by this wiki page

http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/moinmoin/WebProgramming

but while there are many choices, most lack critical mass.

Suggestions and corrections welcome,

ka
---

BitTorrent
	downloads: 1.3-1.5 million/month (most downloads are just end-users)
	related Python projects: ABC, G3, burst!

SpamBayes
	downloads: 25K/month (most downloads are just end-users, aka Outlook 
plugin)

Mailman
	downloads: 2-3K/month
	large installed base, including SourceForge mailing lists

pywin32 (formerly win32all)
	downloads: 20K/month

wxPython
	downloads: 20K/month
	mailing list subscribers: 900+
	related Python projects: Boa-constructor, wxGlade, SPE, PythonCard

Plone
	downloads: 10-14K/month
	related Python projects: Zope, Archetypes, Collective
	book coming out this summer

Zope
	related Python projects: Plone
	10 books

Python Imaging Library (PIL
	downloads 9-15K/month (guesstimate)

PyGTK
	mailing list subscribers: 550+

PyQt
	mailing list subscribers: 500+

NumPy/numarray
	downloads: 6K/month

PyGame
	downloads: 5K/month
	2 books

MySQL for Python
	downloads 4-5K/month

Twisted
	need stats

Jython
	downloads: 3K/month
	2 books


Additional notes:
* Mac OS X includes Python - Jaguar used Python 2.2.0, Panther uses 
Python 2.3.0
* RedHat and Debian Linux distributions include Python and RedHat uses 
Python extensively and some Python projects are also included with the 
distributions.
* Due to bundling and the use of mirror sites we can't collect 
meaningful download totals for Linux users for many projects. In those 
cases, maybe it is better to use the size of the mailing list as a 
popularity gauge?
* http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/moinmoin/AppsWithPythonScripting