The NetBeans IDE "phones home" weekly to check for updates. Sun captures statistics to determine the number of active users and where they are coming from. Below are statistics for the top twenty countries over the past twelve months regardless of product version:
# Country Count Ratio 1. United States 373,252 16.1% 2. Brazil 204,470 8.8% 3. India 142,460 6.1% 4. Germany 120,482 5.2% 5. China 117,489 5.1% 6. Mexico 88,320 3.8% 7. United Kingdom 79,847 3.4% 8. Spain 78,408 3.4% 9. Italy 65,798 2.8% 10. France 59,191 2.5% 11. Poland 57,076 2.5% 12. Canada 49,666 2.1% 13. Colombia 42,970 1.8% 14. Japan 40,883 1.8% 15. Peru 37,230 1.6% 16. Czech Republic 32,763 1.4% 17. Russian Federation 29,765 1.3% 18. Australia 27,992 1.2% 19. Thailand 27,975 1.2% 20. Netherlands 24,551 1.1% (source: NetBeans DreamTeam mailing list Sep 9 2008)
I remember Sun proudly announcing that there are over 300,000 active NetBeans users at JavaOne 2007. Since then versions 6.0 and 6.1 were released, and obviously the user base has grown significantly. I recently discovered that a senior developer I know who works for a major bank is using NetBeans 6.1. He is a recent Eclipse convert and really really loves NetBeans.
It's time for all of you commercial and open source plugin developers to target the massive and ever expanding NetBeans IDE user base. Sometimes I find a great IDE plugin that is only available for Eclipse and IntelliJ IDEA. There is a market for NetBeans plugins.
I see Canada has quite a few NetBeans users. If you are in the Toronto or GTA area and use NetBeans I'd love to hear from you!
Working from his home office in Toronto,
Ryan de Laplante can be found developing software in
Java by day, and obsessing with technology by night.
Ryan has been designing and writing software for
IJW since 1998 and is very passionate about his work.
