SF.net’s new download stats show where users are coming from

We know where you are. And we’re telling the whole world.

SourceForge.net has been using geolocation information for years to determine which of our many mirror sites should serve each user’s files. When a user downloads a file from SF.net, we determine the downloader’s geolocation, then serve the download from the closest mirror site, which generally yields the fastest download speed.

Recently we updated our system to let site visitors see the geolocation of downloaders. The new beta interface to our download statistics lets you see the location of any project’s users by visiting https://sourceforge.net/downloads/PROJECTNAME/stats_timeline (replace PROJECTNAME with the name of an actual project, obviously). For instance, check out the stats for LAME, May’s project of the month. You can specify a date range, see a breakdown of downloads by operating system, and even view a temperature map showing how popular a project is by country.

Just for fun, we created a geodensity map that shows the location of all users who downloaded files from all SourceForge projects in the last two months. Countries shown in darker colors indicate larger numbers of downloads.

Download map