[tex-live] TL 13 -- how many maintained installations are there?

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 2014-04-15 at 12:44:15 +0200, AW wrote:

 > Clearly, you cannot count all of the tex-live installations which
 > come with a Linux distribution. You never know, whether it will be
 > used ever.
 > 
 > So maybe we could get a rough estimation of active users by
 > counting the computers which update a given TL 13 installation.
 > 
 > Is there a way to find out how many computers have updated TL 13
 > using tlmgr, at least once? Or is this somewhere between difficult
 > and impossible to find out, because the mirrors don't count how
 > often an update has been downloaded?

It's impossible, you mentioned the mirrors already. 
 
 > The introduction of the companion, 2. ed., made a forecast (I'm
 > refering to the German edition): LaTeX wil be used extensivly for
 > another 15 years until 2020.
 > 
 > If possible without too much time and effort, I'd like to find out
 > how we perform, ten years later now.

Well, the number of DANTE members (abt. 2000) is constant for years.

The number of files provided by TeX Live increased from 65,000 to
130,000 since 2007.  I can't imagine that the number of package
authors is increasing while the number of authors is decreasing.

I'm sure that much of the success in the past is due to
pdfTeX/hyperref and I'm convinced that LuaTeX provides good support
for new developments in the future.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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Reinhard Kotucha                                      Phone: +49-511-3373112
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