80% of PVS-Studio Downloads Done by Aliens or Is the Problem on Our Side?

Aug 13 2015

Author: Evgenii Ryzhkov

In our PVS-Studio team, we are very fond of measuring things. Besides money we earn and salaries and taxes we pay, we also like to measure the number of PVS-Studio downloads, installations, percent distribution across IDEs, and so on. Sometimes these measurements suggest very important conclusions. But at other times they just embarrass us. In this article, I'd like to tell you about one case of this kind and ask for help.

Among other parameters, we measure the following:

The number of PVS-Studio_Setup.exe distribution downloads from the download page.
The number of PVS-Studio installations - both first-time ones and those done "over" old versions as, for example, in the case of updates.
The number of times the trial renewal dialog is displayed. This dialog appears some time later after you start using the analyzer.

Now the statistics we've got for a certain reporting period (its exact length doesn't matter) are as follows:

Distribution downloads: 300
New installations: 32 (first-time ones) plus 37 installations "over" old versions
Number of times the renewal dialog was displayed: 36

These figures look very strange. Out of the total of 300 downloads, only 20% (32+37) of the users installed the tool, and almost all the users who installed it anew (36, which makes 10%) have used the tool long enough to see the trial renewal dialog.

The question is: what about the rest 80% of the downloads? Who downloads but never installs the tool? Internet bots? Humans downloading the analyzer "just in case"? Linux users?

What if we are having a VERY BIG PROBLEM right now we are not even aware of? Please let us know if you or someone you know has experienced any troubles with PVS-Studio installation. How would you explain such a huge gap between the figures in our statistics?

So once again: 80% of those who downloaded the PVS-Studio distribution haven't installed it. Or we haven't got the installation report messages for some reason. Why? If these mysterious strangers can read this, please respond! Write us what you think about it.