POOMA user-base

[Toon Knapen]

I'm performing a small survey on the typical user-base of open-source 
scientific software and the relationship with the complexity of the 
project. The results will be used as feedback to the european and local 
authorities concerning the governmental stimulation of open-source 
scientific software.


Preface:
-----------

One can distinguish two types of users for open-source projects : 
end-users and developers.

The number of end-users for a project is heavily influenced by the ease 
of intallation and use of the project. E.g., if installation is more 
complicated as going through the 'configure ; make ; make install' 
cycle, many end-users will abandon the project. Additionally, once 
installed, the software must be easy to use. I believe that if these two 
conditions are met, the complexity of the project itself has no 
influence on the user-base.
An example is for instance 'gcc'. Although this compiler collection is 
internally very complex, millions of people go through the easy 
installation procedure and happily use it because the user-interface is 
well-known to most of us and thus does not scare people away. Maybe 
'gcc' is not a good example though because the gcc end-users are 
generally developers and thus know how to install new software very 
well. An open-source java virtual machine would for instance be a better 
example.

The other group are the developers that are end-users that also want to 
contribute to the code or use the source-code instead of only the final 
executable. The number of developers that contribute to a project is 
heavily influenced by the number of people that are familiar with the 
technology used in the source-code and the problem-domain the code is 
trying to solve (.e.g to a UML package coded in C++ only people will 
contribute who are familiar with C++(technology) and UML(problem domain)).

Our theory:
---------------

Because of the complexity of scientific software, open-source scientific 
projects generally have very few users and developers. The user-base is 
generally smaller compared to the user-base of similar commercial software.

Open-source scientific projects are generally a bit complicated to use 
because they are mainly not conforming to some known standard-interface 
and end-user manuals are scarce. E.g. many people use octave or scilab 
because the interface is easy for all those who know Matlab. But Rheolef 
for instance has apparantly very few users. Commercial soft on the other 
hand has generally very good documentation (I know, you guys are also 
doing a really big effort on the documentation currently ;-)

In open-source scientific software projects, generally all users seem to 
be developers. Only people that can really benefit from using the 
project and are familiar with the technology and problem-domain will 
generally only invest in learning to use the project. E.g. Blitz++ and 
MTL have a large user-base but these users are also all 'domain 
experts', expert in the problem-domain (numerical analysis) and the 
technology (computer science, C++, expression templates).

Projects for a very specific problem-domain (such as Pooma) the maximum 
possible user-base is thus very restricted.


Survey:
----------

To gain some more insight however in these relations between the number 
of end-users, developers, used technology and problem domain, I would 
like to get some more information over the use of Pooma out there :

_ Do you agree with our theory ?
_ Is POOMA currently used for performing simulations by 
organisations/individuals outside of Los Alamos/Codesourcery
_ How many end-users use POOMA and how many developers contribute to POOMA.
_ why do people plan to use / use / never used / abandoned POOMA.


Goal:
-------

The goal of my survey is mainly because we like to provide feedback to 
the Belgian and European government on the optimal stimulation of 
scientific open-source projects.


Results:
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I would appreciate all answers. In case your answer would be 
confidential, you can email me directly.
I can also report the results of the survey on the ml (the names related 
to the 'confidential answers' will be removed from the statistics) if 
there would be an interest.