Reliable Statistics for OpenOffice and LibreOffice Users Worldwide?

[LastUnicorn]

Does anyone know if it is possible to get statistics on the number of OpenOffice and LibreOffice users world wide?

I would suppose that this might just be download statistics but the problem with those would be that they might be cumulative i.e. they might be constructed as all downloads over all years (if that makes sense). I mean, say I download LibreOffice in 2022 and then download again in 2023 that would count as two downloads, not one-time downloads sort of thing.

[keme]

I don't think so. There are significant sources of error with any approach I can think of, as long as there is no strict licensing policy in effect.

My thoughts (which are mostly off the cuff, not deeply thought through):

Counting downloads
Almost every time I install/upgrade/downgrade on my personal computer, I will download the installer again. I rarely save the installer for later. This amounts to annually roughly 10 downloads for one workstation/user. I use different network locations, so even a target location count (if that were in effect) would not distinguish me as one.
When our school defaulted to OpenOffice (before the municipality decided to standardize on the MS platform), I would download one version, and use that for installs throughout the school year. This amounted to annually two downloads (MacOS + Windows installer) for 800+ workstations/users.

Statistically comparing types of existing documents
Assessing document output towards public outlets, comparing the volume of documents stored to MS file formats (because MS is the market leader) vs. that of documents stored to ODF formats (for which AOO/LO is the most likely source application) may give a reasonable estimate for the ratio of MS vs. LO/AOO user counts. But ...

• For various reasons, some AOO/LO users will save to Microsoft (OOXML/legacy) formats.
• For various reasons, some MS users will save to ODF format.
• Public outlets may be biased towards open formats (by user preference or by law).

Existing statistics
The only reliable way I can see is a properly conducted poll. I tried a quick search, and am currently unable to locate any poll results on this subject.

... which begs the question ...

Why do you want this information? What level of precision do you need?

[LastUnicorn]

Hi Keme,

Thank you for your very thoughtful response: You thought of some issues that I didn't think of myself; and which, of course, make the situation even more complex than I thought myself. I wanted the information for the following reason:

I have a dictionary program WordWeb (I actually use the paid for WordWeb Pro edition) that I have used for years with both Microsoft Office and OpenOffice/LibreOffice. For MS Office it is possible to get WordWeb to look-up a word using the key-and-mouse-sequence Ctrl+RightMouseClick. When that is done WordWeb opens up and displays the word clicked on and offers a 'Replace' button so that you can replace the word with another word on a single mouse click – this is very good and useful functionality. However, that same functionality isn't available for OpenOffice/LibreOffice. Nowadays I very rarely use MS Office and I do miss that WordWeb 'Replace' functionality for OpenOffice/LibreOffice.

In OpenOffice/LibreOffice to get that 'Replace' functionality to work I need to manually highlight the word using a left-mouse-double-click and then press the key combination Ctrl+W — so here extra steps are involved which are quite tedious to perform. On doing that WordWeb opens up and I get the 'Replace' button option to replace the word with another word. So you would note that Ctrl+RightMouseClick doesn't work in OpenOffice/LibreOffice as it does for MS Office.

Today I decided to try and write an AutoHotkey script that makes it possible to use the Ctrl+RightMouseClick in OpenOffice/LibreOffice and have it work so that it forces WordWeb to show the 'Replace' button option (as it does in MS Office). I'm not much of a coder but after five hours of trying I finally managed to get a script that works for this. (Great! And I gave myself a good pat on the back for managing it!)

Having done that I then thought to email the developer of WordWeb, inform him what I had done, and ask him to make the functionality 'native' for WordWeb for users of OpenOffice/LibreOffice. As part of doing that I thought it would be good to provide some stats on the number of users of OpenOffice/LibreOffice. With good stats it might help to convince him that the effort to get things working 'properly' for OpenOffice/LibreOffice was probably worth his while.

I did search for stats but all I could get was stats for the number of downloads (not number of known users). Having now received your answer to my query I guess I will just have to use crude 'download stats' and hope that the developer of WordWeb regards that as sufficient reason to add some code to the program and have it operate like MS Office for OpenOffice/LibreOffice.

Thanks again for the response, much appreciated. Off now to finish my email to WordWeb. :0)