David's World

August 15, 2005

A growing fan base for Aquamacs

Great news: Aquamacs, my Emacs-for-Mac OS X-project is gaining new fans every day. I ran some statistics (I like stats!!) on the data I've been collecting from the application's "version check" feature, where it connects to our server every three days or so to see if a new version is available. We take note of that and log the installed version and a few other things - strictly non-personal info, of course. Most applications do this - Aquamacs is open source, though, so we're being open about it.

The results are very motivating. About one third to one fourth of all people who try it out stick with it. The latest release (0.9.4) generated quite a bit of interest. We have users from 64 different countries, and as the diagram below shows, we're getting more every day. Even though I can't devote much time to it because I'm working on interesting research, the next version will be even more reliable, snappier and have a few new functions and a better menu structure.

By the way: Aquamacs is a joint project with Kevin Walzer (Wordtech, Ohio), who has written awesome documentation for it. We're looking for other co-developers, by the way!