On 12/8/06, Guido van Rossum <guido@python.org> wrote:
/ftp/python/2.5/python-2.5.msi is by far the top download -- 271,971 hits, more than 5x the next one, /ftp/python/2.5/Python-2.5.tgz (47,898 hits). Are these numbers real?
Why wouldn't it be? Most computers are running windows. Most people running some other operating system can get python from that someplace else -- and have to if they don't want to compile it themselves. (But recompiling isn't usually a barrier, as compilers usually come with the system.) Most people running windows cannot compile python. I'm not sure there even *is* a free way to do it; mingw may well compile additional extensions, but it can't compile the main python tree. There have been recipes for using free MSVC versions, but I'm not sure whether any work today. -jJ