GNU-Darwin yearly report

proclus@iname.com writes, The GNU-Darwin CD images are easily among our most
popular downloads, and will soon rival AbiWord, Xdarwin, E!, OpenSSH,
PyMOL, and even the package manager itself. More interestingly, the x86
iso is at least as popular as the ppc image, and we are seeing a similar
situation with x86 packages. We may soon face the possibility that the
GNU-Darwin Apple users will be outnumbered by GNU-Darwin Intel users.

See for yourself, and be sure to
give rrp your vote of confidence.

In addition, GNU-Darwin served a quarter million page views and over
125,000 downloads in November, which is a continuation of the

exponential growth that we have been experiencing since our founding
last year. (the web counter broke badly in August, but it seems fine
now). Our future is pregnant with potential. A short lull is expected
over the holiday seasion (as in last August), but 2002 promises a return
to exponential growth building towards
Apple’s release of Mac OS X.2
next summer. At that time we hope to see another surge of interest in
the Distribution as mainstream and long-time Apple users finally begin
to discover free software and the Unix command line.

Of course, these facts suggest that we should commence CD duplication as
soon as possible, and offer hard CD’s for sale for benefit of the
Distribution; for continued development, and the hardware and internet
services that are required to support that development, as we can. In
the interim, we will continue to develop and polish the CD installers,
but we need to know how many people would be interested in purchasing
GNU-Darwin CD’s from standard internet outlets. Please state whether
you would purchase x86, ppc, or both, and also how many friends of yours
will would do likewise. We will tally the numbers and take them to the
publisher.

Recent events have brought a fresh load of diverse and energized users
to the Distribution, and it is an

exciting time! Many of these users
have been asking how they can help or contribute to the Distribution, so
we have set up a
PayPal
so that people can help the Distribution
now, instead of waiting for the release of hard CDs. In addition, if
you are good with making T-shirts or mouse pads for GNU-Darwin users, and would like to
donate some of your proceeds to the Distro, then we can certainly point
to your webpage.
As always, good coders with ready packages are also
welcome.