On Wednesday 16 August 2006 10:32, _ langagemachine wrote: [...] Are you sure that's actually what happens, in the general case? A project in development generates a lot of noise for obvious reasons; user questions, bug reports, feature sugestions etc. Potential and actual users are attracted by this noise, maybe hoping for a much better solution than what they've been using before. Lots of attention there, but what is the ratio between interested bystanders and actual users/testers, actually? :-) When a project matures, most of that noise goes away. Stuff works as intended, documentation is in a usable state and potential users can try the software out on their own. Active users focus on the job at hand rather than the tools they're using, and if the tools work as expected, everyone is happy - and quiet. So, even if there is generally less noise around mature projects, the software can still have a large active user base. If there are no problems, users generally won't say much. Also, considering the number of dependencies the average application has these days, only the highest profile libraries, if any, are mentioned for marketing reasons. How many applications have badges and stuff for every single library or technology they depend on? One would think that "integration technologies" should always be advertised all over the place, so you know whether or not the application will work in your setup, but I guess developers in general aren't all that much into marketing... :-) //David Olofson - Programmer, Composer, Open Source Advocate .------- http://olofson.net - Games, SDL examples -------. | http://zeespace.net - 2.5D rendering engine | | http://audiality.org - Music/audio engine | | http://eel.olofson.net - Real time scripting | '-- http://www.reologica.se - Rheology instrumentation --'