Most Popular Python Projects
Missing from original email
BitPim URL: http://bitpim.sourceforge.net/ downloads: 13-15K/month py2exe URL: http://py2exe.sourceforge.net/ downloads: 3-4K/month Combined with Inno Setup users can package and distribute Python applications as standalones on Windows. ReportLab URL: http://www.reportlab.com/ downloads: 2K/month mailing list subscribers: 500+
Original Message to marketing-python mailing list
Below is the original email. It is just a placeholder while the real formatted content for this page gets created above. I'm design challenged. <wink> I haven't figured out what kind of formatting I want to use yet. If you want to go ahead and start adding or revising content on this page, go ahead, just leave the email below alone and remember that other people might be checking out the page as well, so copy your text before submission in case there is a conflict from someone else making an update. -- KevinAltis
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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
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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