That's an interesting read William, and I think a pretty good aim and justification.
I realise that users of sagemath.org is a proxy for the number of users of Sage. It's no doubt better than the number of downloads, since many users might stick with an old version of Sage, be getting it from their distribution, or using it on cloud.sagemath.com. But it is also subject to at least some adjustment due to the availability of resources other than sagemath.org, such as the excellent resources you mentioned, the existence of stack overflow, courses using Sage, etc. So growth may not have actually been negative. Users might simply be getting their information in more diverse locations. Having said that, it does seem clear that growth has at least stagnated to some degree, though Sage remains about as popular as it has ever been. The main questions that come into my mind after reading your post are: * Out of curiosity, is there any indication that the seasonal fluctuation in usage of sagemath.org is largely or in part down to stem users? * What are stem undergraduate students currently using predominantly? I'm guessing Mathematica, Maple and Matlab, but not Magma? * What can Sage offer that disrupts what is being offered by the other contenders? Price seems to be one answer. But I seriously question whether 45 Euros a year (for a Mathematica student license) is a deal-breaker for most students (it's only the price of another textbook). And I'm sure they've done extensive research to set that value at the most they can ask for regionally to maximise usage and profit. * How does the strategy feed the future development of Sage? Is the strategy to increase the number of competent Sage users in stem so that the number of competent developers, plus the number of people who need Sage when they enter the workforce is higher in the future? Bill. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
