How many copies of PHYLIP have been distributed?
On 21 November, 1996 we reached 4,000 registered installations worldwide. A year earlier it was 3,000, so that we are registering 1,000 new users per year at the moment. Of course there are many more people who have got copies from friends. PHYLIP is the most widely distributed phylogeny package. (This situation may reverse itself rapidly once PAUP* is released in 1997. During the years it was in distribution, PAUP was ahead in phylogenies published, and the availability of distance and likelihood methods in PAUP* may make it very popular.) In recent years magnetic tape distribution and e-mail distribution of PHYLIP has disappeared, and there has been a big decrease of diskette distributions (down to fewer than one per week). But all this has been more than offset by, first, an explosion of distributions by anonymous ftp over Internet, and then a bigger explosion of World Wide Web distributions and registrations (about 4 registrations per day at the moment).
