Re: IDL and WAVE: # and types of users?

[gurman(at)gsfc.nasa.gov (Joseph B. Gurman)]

In article <37BEB8A6.BC92B5D1@sprynet.com>, Mitch Grunes
<grunesm@sprynet.com> wrote:

    I have no way of estimating what you really want, other than to note
that we have IDL icenses numbered > 18000. (Does anyone know if these are
always given out serially? Each new license we've gotten has been higher
numbered than the previous one, and when we buy multiple licenses at a
time, they are consecutively numbered.) Admittedly, some licenses have
probably lapsed, but quite a few others out there are for servers with
multiple seats. If I had to hazard a guess, I would estimate the number of
IDL users at some tens of thousands.

    Of course, "users" is a broad term, including the cluesless using code
developed by others.

    My $0.02,

                  Joe Gurman

> I wish to estimate how many users there are for IDL and PV-WAVE.
> 
> Anyone have any idea?  In terms of who has more, and in 
> actual #'s?  Also: am I right that IDL users mostly fall
> into the remote sensing community, while PV-WAVE users are
> mostly financial business?  Or is that nonsense?
> 
> (I know I am a bit tired of trying to make my software work 
> with both.)
> 
> My own best guess is that each has only a few thousand at the
> very most.  But that would make it hard for them to make
> a living--unless they make most of their income from software
> subscriptions, technical help, training and consulting.

-- 
Joseph B. Gurman / NASA Goddard Space Flight Center / Solar Physics Branch /
Greenbelt MD 20771 / work: gurman@gsfc.nasa.gov /other: gurman@ari.net

Government employees are still not allowed to hold opinions while at work,
so any opinions expressed herein must be someone else's.